


Cinderella of Chicago

by LoveMeSomeRafael



Category: Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, Chicago PD (TV)
Genre: Dorks in Love, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, Romance, Very light smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2020-10-25 02:51:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20716880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveMeSomeRafael/pseuds/LoveMeSomeRafael
Summary: Brian Zvonecek - Otis to his buddies at Firehouse 51 - meets a great girl at a fantasy/comic convention.  She's dressed as the wife of the character he's dressed as!   It's fate!  But she disappears, leaving only one trace to let him know she was real: a piece of her costume.





	1. The Ball

His outfit was sheer genius. The wings could actually lift and wave, and fold back to their resting position smoothly and silently. They worked on servos he’d spent way too much for, but it was worth it. You couldn’t even see him toggle the switch that controlled them, because it fit perfectly within his palm. Brilliant.

Not only that, but the workmanship on the suit itself was perfect. His Baba had asked no questions, just taken the pictures he’d given her, drawn up a pattern, and sewed holy hell out of it. It fit like a glove and made him look pretty damn good, if he did say so himself. He’d had to make a few concessions here and there on fabric and trim, mostly because the real suit was undoubtedly butter-soft leather that cost about a million dollars a yard, but he’d done superbly there, too. Well worth the number of days off he’d spent haunting every fabric store in greater Chicago. 

Which is why Brian Zvonecek could not be blamed for maniacally bouncing his foot and checking the clock every seven seconds as he sat ignoring the morning talk show on the common room TV, waiting for this shift at Firehouse 51 to end. When ChicagoCon started in approximately three hours, he planned to be there, and he planned to be the best Sumendi anyone had ever seen. Including, hopefully, Anthony Lang, the guy who actually played Sumendi in all three movies, and was going to be on a panel talking about the upcoming movie that would have all the Planetary Saviors in it. Brian couldn’t wait. 

************  
At this stage of her nursing career, not much bothered Meg Armstrong, but this was a bunch of shit. Literally, the largest amount of feces she’d ever seen, which had issued from a homeless woman who had come in to Chicago Med’s Emergency Room after not being able to “go boom-boom” (her phrase) for a week. Well, they’d solved that problem. And now, here was Meg, four years of college and fifty thousand dollars in student loans later, dealing with the aftermath of their success. 

At least her shift was almost over. The minute she had Mrs. Carlsberg cleaned out and cleaned up, she could, at long last, catch the El to her friend Karen’s apartment where the girls were meeting to get ready for ChicagoCon. After all the planning and all the work to make it, Meg was dying to put on all the pieces of her Tabiti costume and hit Rosemont. 

************  
The hall was huge. Actually, if Brian was being honest with himself, it was a little overwhelming. Half of Chicago was here, and a good third of them were in costume. He’d get used to the crowd, and the more people in costume the better, because he knew he looked good. He’d already lost count of the number of people who’d asked for permission to take his picture, or to be in selfies with him. He graciously agreed every time, while his roommate Joe Cruz rolled his eyes and made annoyed faces. Well, Cruz could be getting this kind of attention if he’d chosen to dress up, but he’d absolutely refused. So there he was, wearing a T-shirt and jeans and absolutely invisible next to Brian.

“C’mon, Otis, we’re not gonna get a good place in line for the panel.”

Brian accepted yet another high five on his costume and joined Cruz for the short walk to join the throng in front of the doors to the main auditorium. The panel wasn’t for another hour at least, but if they didn’t get in line now, they’d have lousy seats. Brian wanted to be sure to get great pictures and – although he didn’t admit it to Cruz – he hoped someone on the panel would notice that he was looking crazy good as Sumendi. 

For the next hour, Brian and Cruz stood cheek by jowl with an odiferous mass of Planetary Saviors fans, many in costume. There were a fair number of Sumendis, but none that could approach Brian’s costume, even without the real, working wings. Unfortunately, there weren’t many women in the vicinity of Brian and Cruz to make the wait more enjoyable. There were a few mediocre Tabitis and one group of all the female Planetary Saviors, but they were all too young to be interesting. 

Being taller, Cruz could see further into the crowd. He mentioned a few particularly cool costumes, but Brian couldn’t see them. It would be easier to check out the costumes when they were released from the horde into the auditorium. For now, he was stuck among a mostly-male group of younger fans, all of whom smelled like they needed either a shower or a lesson in moderation when applying Axe body spray. He wished he was wearing his SCBA apparatus. It would’ve ruined the look of his costume, of course, but no one could really see it in this crush, anyway.  
At last, the doors opened and Brian and Cruz were propelled into the auditorium by a suddenly frenzied mob, having all they could do to keep upright. But they had a plan. Cruz was pretty big, and could use his arms and elbows to basically swim through the crowd. All Brian had to do was stay tucked right behind him, and Cruz would get them to the front. Which he did with a minimum amount of elbowing teenagers and a very clever “accidental” de-helmeting of a Boba Fett. 

***************  
Meg and her friends were not as successful, mostly because they didn’t have a plan beyond “get great seats”, and they didn’t feel like waiting in a huge, jostling melee for the auditorium doors to open. Still, they got in for the panel and had seats. They counted that as success, especially since all five women were seated together. Karen was determined to get to ask Ken Terhune, who played Sumendi’s wicked brother, Adranos, a question. He was _so hot_, she was sure she would have an instant orgasm if he actually spoke to her, and she was going to do whatever it took to make that happen. 

The first thing she’d done to get his attention was to come dressed as Afi, wife of Adranos. Another thing she’d done was to make sure that her boobs looked spectacular in her Afi costume. Not that much of her boobs were _in_ her Afi costume, but that was kind of the point. 

While they waited for the panel to start, the women looked around the auditorium, admiring all the costumes and looking for cute guys. Liz saw one cute guy, right down front, in a really great Sumendi costume. She elbowed Meg and pointed. 

“Look over there! That guy’s Sumendi is almost as good as your Tabiti! You should totally get a picture with him,” Liz told Meg. 

“Whoa! That _is_ a good costume. He’s cute, too. But I’m not going down there. What would I say? ‘Hey, dude, I see we’re dressed as a couple, so let’s get our pictures taken together?’ I’d die of embarrassment.”

“Then I’ll say it. You look really good, and it doesn’t look like he has a Tabiti with him. Come on.” 

“Not happening, Liz. Thanks, though. Hey, look over there. Is that dude supposed to be a zombie from The Walking Dead?”

“I don’t think so. I think he just needs to eat some vegetables or something.”

“Unfortunate.”

“Highly.”

*******************  
“Cruz, Cruz… look at that Tabiti up there!” 

“Whoa, dude, she’s checkin’ you out, too. You should go meet her.”

“I can’t go meet her – we gotta… protect these seats.”

“You’re such a weenie, Otis.”

“Are you really willing to give up these primo seats just to - Oh! They’re starting!”

**************  
The panel was awesome. Nobody on the panel said anything about Brian’s outstanding costume, but he was sure they saw him. Both Brian and Cruz were hoping to get picked to ask their questions, which would have given Brian a perfect opportunity to show off his Sumendi wings, but that didn’t happen, either. Still, it was a great panel. Well worth the hassle of getting in and getting these seats.

After the panel, it was time to cruise the main exhibition hall. That was going to take some time and coordination, because Anthony Lang was going to be signing autographs and taking pictures at three O’clock, and Brian had pre-paid for his photo op. He was not going to miss out on that. Cruz had thought that the $75 price tag was too high, but that was ridiculous. How could you put a price on getting your picture taken with the real Sumendi? 

***********  
Meg and her friends needed a break after the excitement of the panel. They’d do the Exhibition Hall, but right now coffee was a must. Karen was bummed that she didn’t get to ask her question, and that Ken Terhune hadn’t commented on her Afi costume (or her boobs). But they all thought a little caffeine would fix her right up. 

They’d been right, and for a while, they’d had a great time shopping the booths and checking out the costumes. But after lunch, Susan and Lita were getting a little tired of the Con. The others wouldn’t say it out loud, of course, until after they’d gone home, but Susan and Lita weren’t really “fans” so much as just there for the experience itself. Maybe Susan and Lita wouldn’t even understand that was an insult. But best not to say it out loud anyway. 

“Come on, you guys, we’re only halfway done with the Hall! We’re never gonna see everything if we take another break,” Meg urged, pulling on Lita’s arm.

“We’re getting smoothies. We’ll meet you after. We know the pattern you’re following around the Hall, we’ll just find you.” And just like that, Susan and Lita ducked into the crowd and were gone, leaving Meg, Karen, and Liz (wearing a Sumendi T-shirt, which was closer to being in costume than her friends had thought they’d get) to shop the rest of the booths. 

The next booth they came to sold nothing but hoodies – from traditional ones printed with pictures and logos from all sorts of fantasy franchises to ones with attachments on the hoods that made you look like your favorite character. They spent a long time looking through them all, especially trying to find one with Adranos’s crown in Karen’s size. They were ultimately successful, and she waited in line to pay more than Meg ever would have for it. Liz continued to hunt through every hoodie with a Dr. Who theme, afraid she would miss The One if she didn’t look at every single one to make sure she hadn’t missed a design.

Meg’s feet were starting to hurt in Tabiti’s signature stiletto-heeled red boots, so she took the opportunity to lean against one side of the booth so she could stand on one foot at a time, giving the other a rest. 

“That is an outstanding costume,” a voice at her ear said. 

Meg turned to face the cute guy in the really good Sumendi costume they had seen at the panel. 

“Oh, hi,” she stammered, immediately embarrassed at the overzealous squeal in her voice. “Yours is great, too. I saw you, at the panel. It’s really… great.” _Could I be more of an idiot?_

“Thanks. Your headpiece is awesome. Isn’t that heavy?” He asked. They had to practically shout to be heard over the jostling, milling throng hemming them in. But it was worth it. Brian couldn’t believe his luck finding the Tabiti they’d seen at the panel, who was even cuter up close. 

“It isn’t that bad,” Meg answered, self-consciously touching her headpiece and knocking a shower of glitter onto her shoulder. “It’s papier-mâché, mostly. So not that heavy. You can, you know, touch it. If you want.”

Brian touched Meg’s headpiece, knocking on it a little with his finger. “Wow. I’d swear it was metal, from a distance.” _From a distance? Nice one, moron. She’s gonna punch you. _

“Thanks. What did you use for the red streaks in your hair?”

“That? That’s natural.”

Meg laughed, but then began to cough as she inhaled a bit of spit down the wrong tube. _Oh, for fuck’s sake. Kill me now. You, Aquaman over there, if you could just impale me with your trident, that would be great. He’s gonna think I have fucking tuberculosis. _

The problem was that he had smiled. This Sumendi, who was pretty cute to begin with, and had made a very funny joke, had smiled after he said it. And his smile was… electrifying. He had gorgeous, white teeth and, with his dark hair and dark eyes, and the little moustache and soul patch he wore (which Meg usually hated), it was just… well, it was enough to make her choke on her own spit like the gargoyle she was. 

He patted her on the back. “You gonna be OK? I’m a firefighter. If you need CPR, just say the word.” 

Meg flapped her hands around, trying to signal that she would be OK, and desperately tried to control her cough. She could feel the tears smearing her mascara and knew for a fact her face was beet red. _Yeah. Some Tabiti. She’s supposed to hold Sumendi spellbound with her charms, which I’m dead certain don’t involve hacking up a lung at his feet._

“I’m… I’m OK…” Meg choked. The taller guy behind Sumendi handed her a bottle of water, which she gratefully accepted. He was kind of cute, too, she noticed. The water helped.

“I’m sorry.” Meg covered her face with her hand. “I just… something went down the wrong way, I don’t know…”

“As long as you’re OK.” Sumendi was looking at her with a sort of serious expression. That looked good on him, too. _Did he say he was a firefighter?_ Meg really, really liked firefighters.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Thanks for the water,” she said to the taller guy, handing back the bottle.

“Keep it. Just in case,” he said, smiling. “Hey, would you mind if we got a picture of you guys? You know, together?”

Sumendi smiled again. “Yeah, that would be great!” 

Meg was still working to calm her spasming trachea, and knew what her makeup must now look like. “I’d like that, but… Can I just…” She pointed to a mirror in the jewelry booth next to the hoodie booth. 

“Oh, sure!” Sumendi said excitedly. _Could I sound more like a fourteen-year-old? Damn it!_

Meg went over to the next booth, bending down to survey the damage to her eye makeup. It was bad. She pulled her small backpack off her shoulder and rummaged inside. People kept bumping against her in the overcrowded Exhibition Hall, making her work much harder. She was eventually pushed over to the other side of the booth, where there was another mirror. She had to wipe a lot of smeared mascara off her cheeks, which messed up the rest of her makeup, which meant she had to re-do that, too, before she could re-apply her mascara. It took a solid five minutes, with added time to deal with all the pushes and shoves from the crowd and those wanting to get closer to use the mirror themselves to try on jewelry.

“You ready to go on?” Meg heard Karen’s voice at her elbow. She looked up, surprised. 

“Oh, well, we’re gonna get a picture together, me and Sumendi.” She looked over to where Sumendi and his friend had been, but couldn’t see them in the seething crowd. 

“What Sumendi?”

“The cool one, the one we saw at the panel. They were right there-“ 

Liz stepped up beside Karen. “They didn’t have any good Dr. Who shirts. Let’s go.” 

“No, but… wait-“

“Meg, I don’t see any Sumendi around here. Maybe he bailed.”

“He didn’t bail! They were right there!” She moved toward the hoodie booth as best she could, but there were so many people crowded around it was difficult to maneuver. Pushing a bit, she got further into the walkway but couldn’t see Sumendi or his friend. 

“Damn! They’re gone.”

Karen and Liz hustled Meg along to the next booth. They still had a lot of ground to cover. Meg was crushed. That Sumendi had been really cute. And he said he was a firefighter. And that smile! 

Meanwhile, Brian and Cruz had been shoved into the hoodie booth, and were trying to get back to the walkway, but it was taking forever. Finally, Joe used his elbow-swim move to escape the booth, with Brian in tow. By the time they got out to the walkway, Tabiti was nowhere in sight. Brian sighed. He had really liked the deep copper color of her hair, especially with her green eyes. Plus, she’d remembered him from the panel! 

****************  
“OK, this is where I leave you,” Cruz announced as Brian joined the line for his picture with Anthony Lang. It was only two thirty, but he wanted to be sure to get his picture and autograph. 

“You sure, Cruz? This is Anthony Lang we’re talking about.”

“I know, but I’m not paying seventy-five bucks for a picture with a dude I can see in a movie for less than twenty. You’re crazy. I’m going back in, to finish the Exhibition Hall.”

“Fine. You’re missing out.” 

Cruz gave a little wave and disappeared into the crowd, just missing colliding with Meg as she maneuvered through the crush of people to join the line for pictures and autographs with Anthony Lang. Looking around, she figured out where the end of the line was and stepped up behind the last person, who happened to have a really good Sumendi costume –

“Hey! It’s you!” Brian greeted Meg, again giving her that blinding smile. She blinked a bit, momentarily confused by his sudden reappearance and by the effect that smile had on her.

“Oh, hi! We got separated. I’m sorry, I really wanted to have a picture with you.” 

“Yeah, so did I. But we can do it now. You know, if you want.”

Meg’s face fell a little. “I’d like that. I guess you’ll have to text it to me, though, because my phone died.”

Now Brian’s face fell. “You are not going to believe this.”

“What?”

“I don’t have a phone, either. I gave it to my roommate, because there’s no place for it in my costume, and I didn’t want to be bothered with it. He has it in his jacket.”

Just Brian’s luck. Here he was, looking great as Sumendi, with a long wait ahead next to the best Tabiti he’d seen at the Con, who seemed genuinely excited to have their picture taken together, and neither of them had a phone. His choices were laugh or cry. Or swear a blue streak, he supposed, but he didn’t know this girl and she seemed really nice. Maybe she would be turned off if he swore. But he was brutally disappointed. 

Meg laughed, so Brian joined her. She was no more thrilled than he was not to have a camera, but maybe they could find her friends, or his, when they were done with Anthony Lang. Or maybe they could get a picture taken in the booth _with_ Anthony Lang. That would be really cool. In any event, she was pretty happy to get to spend the next hour or so with this cute Sumendi while they waited. They were going to get a chance to actually talk. To get to know each other. She wondered whether he was single. She also wondered, based on the excellent craftsmanship of his costume and his obvious closeness to the guy he’d called his “roommate”, whether he was straight. She really hoped so. 

“I’m Brian, by the way,” he introduced himself.

“Meg.”

“Meg. Nice name.”

“Short for Margaret. Call me Margaret and you’ll get Tabiti’s scepter up your nose.”

Brian held up his hands. “Meg it is. That tip looks like it could do some real damage.” 

Meg smiled and took a look at the tip of her scepter, which had a lampwork glass flame at the end. It was fairly pointed. “Just letting you know the rules.”

“That scepter is great. You’re really talented. How’d you make that?”

Meg explained the rather simple process of fabricating the scepter. The basic idea wasn’t too complicated; she’d started with an old baton. But she made Brian laugh with her story of the lengthy and heated negotiations she’d had to conduct with the friend who made the tip. 

The friend, Alice, made lampwork beads, which was a fairly expensive hobby that required a great deal of practice to master. Besides that, the flame tip had to be both intricate - woven of several different colors of glass - and strong enough to withstand whatever abuse it would get at the Con. Alice’s initial price had been far too steep for Meg to afford, so Meg had offered to clean Alice’s apartment in addition to paying what cash she could. No deal. Meg had added a week of cat sitting, but still the price was more than she could pay. In the end, Alice had agreed to accept the price Meg offered, along with the apartment cleaning and cat sitting, plus one more, hideous cost. 

Alice had a cousin named Harold. Harold’s mother, Alice’s aunt, was very concerned that Harold, who was going on twenty, hadn’t met the right girl yet. Alice’s aunt kept pressuring Alice to set Harold up. So Meg had ended up having to accept a date with Harold. 

There was a reason Harold hadn’t met the right girl. Several, in fact. First and foremost, Harold had the worst breath Meg had ever experienced. He was also extremely shy, but only at first. Once the lights had gone down in the movie theater, suddenly he was all hormones and hands, and Meg had spent the next two hours ignoring the movie in favor of fending off almost-continual frontal assaults.  
In the end, the guy behind them in the theater had actually leaned forward and hissed to Harold, “Dude, even I can see you’re not gonna get there with her. Give it up and let’s all leave with what little dignity we have left.” 

After the movie, Harold had taken Meg to a bar he said he frequented. Meg was completely uninterested in Harold, but after what she’d been through, she was very interested in a drink, so she’d agreed. “They know me here,” Harold said proudly. 

They didn’t know him there. And, apparently, he didn’t know them, either, because the bar’s clientele, while sparse, was mostly female, and entirely gay. When they had their drinks (Meg didn’t usually do shots, but it was an emergency), Harold had once again begun relentlessly trying to grope her. Meg was usually a very nice person, but she’d had enough. So she said, quite loudly, “Listen, I have asked you more than once to stop trying to touch me like that. No means no. Knock it off.”

Harold was very unceremoniously escorted from the bar by a lovely woman named Bud. Meg had enjoyed getting to know Bud over a few drinks, and they’d had a few laughs at Harold’s expense, but Meg was honest about her preferences when Bud handed over her phone number. Bud didn’t seem to mind that Meg wasn’t planning to call, which Meg actually found pretty attractive. She kept Bud’s number. She didn’t even mind having to pay for the cab home.

Brian liked that story a lot. He had really appreciated the opportunity to simply stand there, listening to Meg and appreciating the way her green eyes sparkled when she smiled, and the cute way her nose wrinkled when she laughed. Meg was funny, and Brian especially liked that the story indicated quite clearly that she wasn’t seeing anyone. Which, of course, was part of Meg’s reason for telling it, in addition to introducing the topic of lesbians in hopes that Brian would share something that would let her know which team he played for. 

“Now it’s your turn to tell me an embarrassing story about you,” Meg invited. 

“The problem with that is there are so many choices,” Brian mused. “Stuff seems to… happen to me.” He hemmed and hawed for a few moments. He needed to find a story that would let her know that he, too, was single, and preferably one that also reminded her (in case she’d missed it the first time) that he was a firefighter. Women loved firefighters. 

“Well, there was this one time on a fire – did I mention I’m a firefighter? – when this really, really huge guy was stuck in a hammock. We never did learn why he had a hammock in his living room, but…” 

Brian told a very funny story that ended with the man being rescued (if not very gracefully) and the man wanting to reward Brian with a date with his sister. He had tried valiantly to get out of the “reward”, explaining to the man that it wasn’t necessary, and that it was really a little frowned upon for firefighters to be rewarded for just doing their jobs. Baked goods or something, sure, but… Brian had been entirely unable to talk the man out of it. The entire firehouse had given him endless shit about it, because all of them imagined the sister as, basically, the brother in drag. 

Until she showed up at the firehouse for their date and was one of the most beautiful women any of them had ever seen. 

“So? Did you marry her and live happily ever after?” Meg asked, laughing (on the outside, at least – she was finding that she cared more by the moment whether he liked girls). 

“I’m afraid not,” Brian answered with a cute twist of his lips. “She was about two feet taller than I am, and she was, um… let’s just say we should set her up with your friend’s cousin. They’d never be heard from again.”

“I thought guys liked women with, um, an appetite.” 

“Well, sure, to a point. But that one… I don’t think I want to marry a woman if I’d be afraid to fall asleep around her.”

They both enjoyed a long moment of laughter. _Hmmm. So he’s single and apparently straight. Well, well._

The conversation moved on to the Planetary Saviors. For quite some time, Brian and Meg enjoyed talking about what they liked – and didn’t like – about the Sumendi movies thus far and what they hoped to see in the new movie that would include all of the Planetary Saviors. The fun of that conversation was that they didn’t always agree – Brian thought Sumendi’s look in the movies was nowhere near as good as in the original comics, while Meg had to admit to not having read the comics themselves. Somehow, whether because they were intentionally trying to humor one another due to their mutual attraction, or because they really didn’t mind, they found that their differences actually made them see the Planetary Saviors universe just a bit differently than they had. Rather than being annoyed, they were each favorably impressed with the other’s slightly different take on the franchise. 

“Sumendi’s made of fire, right? I mean, he’s basically the son of a volcano, so why doesn’t he have any glow to him? In the comics, he does. He has a sort of inner light that makes him look sort of… molten inside, you know?”

Since Meg hadn’t seen the comics, they borrowed some comic books and a couple of artists’ renderings that people around them in line had purchased at the Con. She saw Brian’s point. He liked that she was interested in his thoughts, and was especially impressed when she began to think out loud about ways he could make his costume have that same lit-from-within quality. 

“That’s genius!” He cried. “I would never have thought of that. I’m going to-“

The crowd noise, which had been fairly deafening, suddenly ceased entirely as the air was split by a scream. All eyes turned in the direction it had come from, behind and to the left of the booth at which Brian and Meg were waiting for Anthony Lang. A knot of people were standing around a woman on the floor, but the thick crowd had parted so that there was a few feet between the people with the woman and the staring mass just beyond. The woman on the ground was jerking violently and appeared to be very pregnant. 

“She’s seizing,” Meg cried as she slipped quickly under the ropes that demarcated the line she and Brian had been in. Running over to the woman, Meg dropped her belongings as she knelt on the floor beside her. She reached out and took the woman by the shoulders, helping her to turn onto her side, and was surprised to find Brian kneeling next to her, bending one of the woman’s legs so that she rolled smoothly and easily. 

Meg whipped off her Tabiti headpiece and set it on the floor next to her, beginning to assess the woman quickly. She determined that she was breathing shallowly and irregularly as she seized, and had a strong pulse.

“Who’s with her?” Brian asked loudly, using a tone that instantly commanded attention. 

“We are – she’s my sister. This is her husband,” a thin, terrified-looking woman in a pretty bad SuperGirl costume answered, pointing out the blank-faced teenager next to her.

While Meg commandeered a sweatshirt from a bystander to put under the woman’s head, Brian continued to ask the right questions. 

“What happened?”

“She just… fell down. She started jerking like this and she won’t wake up!” 

“How far along is she?”

“She’s thirty two weeks,” the sister answered. “What’s wrong with her? What’s happening?”

Brian looked at Meg, who almost imperceptibly shook her head. 

“We’re going to figure that out. Who has a phone?”

Brian pointed to the first person whose brandishing of a cell phone caught his attention. “OK, you. Call 911. Stand right here next to me, and when you get them on the line, put them on speaker. You-“ he pointed to a spray-tanned Superman. “Go get help. Security, anyone with a walkie-talkie. Tell them what’s happening and get us whatever medical equipment they have here.”

The woman appeared to have stopped seizing for the moment. Meg looked at the teenager who had been identified as the woman’s husband. “Talk to me, Dad. What medical problems does she have?”

“N-n-nothing. She’s been fine.”

“Has she ever had a seizure before?”

“No! What’s wrong with her?”

“What medications does she take?”

“Nothing. Prenatal vitamins.”

Meg took her pulse at her wrist again, and then felt for her pulse at her throat. She leaned toward Brian and muttered quietly, “Her pulse is bounding – we’ll know more when we can get a BP, but I’m thinking eclampsia.”

“That woulda been my guess. Pregnant, seizing… You a doctor?”

“RN. We need help.”

“It’s on its way. For the moment, it’s you and me.” He looked up at the person he’d asked to call 911. “What’s the holdup?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have much of a signal in here…”

Sharply exhaling in exasperation, Brian looked up at another person who was holding a phone and appeared to be filming the incident. “You. Call 911. And nobody else better be filming. This woman has the right to privacy, same as you.” 

The second person got through immediately and handed Brian the phone. He put it on speaker and, as Meg fed him information, he relayed it to the 911 operator. They worked smoothly together, and Brian had time to notice the expertise with which Meg worked with the woman, who was beginning to regain consciousness. They were both experienced first responders, so their teamwork was not entirely surprising, but there was also an element of natural communication between them. They’d gravitated to their roles in this situation without thought or discussion. 

Meg reached up and unclasped her cape. Brian caught the movement and immediately understood. He helped her remove it and cover the woman with it, then removed his own (which was a little more difficult due to the wings) and put that over her, too. For the next five minutes, they did what they could to make the woman comfortable while Meg got as much medical history as possible and monitored her vital signs. Then the woman began to seize again, and they kept her safe while she thrashed and jerked, making sure she didn’t hit her head and getting people to give them extra clothing so that they could keep something soft between her spasming limbs and the hard floor. 

Brian leaned in to Meg. “This is lasting too long.”

“Yeah. And she’s stopped breathing. As soon as she stops seizing, we need to be ready to do CPR.”

“Got it.” 

At that moment, three people came running through the crowd, pushing their way into the circle around the woman with cases of emergency equipment. They were all EMTs stationed at the facility for the event, so Meg moved aside and reported to them that she was an RN and Brian was a firefighter, and told them what they knew so that the EMTs could take over. She wondered what was taking the ambulance so long, since there were two hospitals within minutes of the facility, but she thought she was probably just dealing with the distorted sense of time that comes with an emergency. 

“Do you have any medications in your kits?” She asked the EMT who appeared to be leading the team.

“No.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, don’t get me started.” 

“She seems to be coming out of it, and I think she’s breathing again. Want me to get a BP?”

“Nah, I got it. But thanks.” 

Not long afterward, the sound of a siren was clearly heard, even over the sound of the mob that was now getting back into the swing of the Con. A fair number of people were still huddled around the scene, watching, but the circle around them was only a few people deep now, since beyond that, no one could really see anything. The rest had decided to go back to their shopping. As the ambulance crew hurried through the Hall, Brian could follow their progress fairly accurately by the disturbance in the throng. He began to back people up so that the paramedics could get through with the gurney. 

The ambulance crew was one he didn’t know. Their arrival caused quite a bit of excitement and hubbub in the area, and Brian lost track of Meg in the group of milling, pushing people. He wasn’t needed to help lift the woman onto the gurney, so he stepped back a bit and tried to control the crowd, to give the paramedics as much room as he could get them in the press of curious gawkers. Soon, the woman had been given some medication to stop her seizures, and the gurney carrying her was rushed from the scene, her sister and teenage husband in tow. 

The crowd flowed back together as though they had never been there, except for Meg’s Tabiti headpiece, which Brian saw on the floor and picked up. He found himself unable to resist the tide of movement, and was swept closer to the booth where he was supposed to be having his picture taken with Anthony Lang. He didn’t see Meg anywhere. Without her Tabiti headpiece on, it was impossible to identify her head among the seeming thousands around him. 

He thought she would probably make for the booth again, though, so he fought his way over to it, only to see a large sign:

Anthony Lang Appearance Cancelled For Today.

The sign gave a website people could go to in order to try to reschedule or get refunds. Meg wasn’t there. 

Brian carried Meg’s headpiece under his arm as he looked everywhere in the huge Exhibition Hall over the next hour. There were simply too many people, moving in too many directions, and the Hall was just too big. Meg was nowhere to be found. All he had to prove she had been real was the papier-mâché headpiece she’d worn as part of her costume.


	2. The Search

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian "Otis" Zvonecek and the woman he met at ChicagoCon keep missing each other. Will they ever find each other again?

Brian sat in the living room of the apartment he shared with Joe Cruz and Sylvie Brett, showing Sylvie the Tabiti headpiece. They told her the story. Brian had searched the ChicagoCon Exhibit Hall for the rest of the afternoon, and when he’d met Joe at their pre-arranged rendezvous, Joe had helped him look, too. But no luck. It was as though the girl Brian had met had disappeared into thin air. 

Sylvie thought it was romantic. She wasn’t worried; she thought that it would be a simple matter of returning to the Con the next day, and hanging out at the booth where Anthony Lang was scheduled to be taking pictures with fans. She had been there the day before, she’d be there the next day. Right? Brian and Cruz thought it sounded like a good possibility. 

Brian lay in bed that night, thinking back over the day. Meg had definitely been pretty. And funny. He had been impressed with her handling of the emergency with the pregnant woman, too. They’d seemed to have a lot in common, and he’d enjoyed the time they’d spent together waiting for Anthony Lang. He liked her. He wanted to see her again. He was going back to ChicagoCon the next day, and he was going to find her.

*********************

Meg spent the next day remembering ChicagoCon. She looked through the things she’d bought and started reading one of the books she’d gotten at a booth where the author herself was selling them. But mostly she thought about Brian. He had been so good looking, and such a great guy. She’d really liked that he was a little uncertain, a little awkward, because so was she. But when it had mattered, he’d handled the situation with the pregnant woman beautifully. She had really liked him, and she couldn’t imagine what he must think of her. Worse, she had no way of finding him to let him know what had happened. 

She’d been separated from him, and pushed toward the side of the Exhibition Hall, and had a very difficult time getting back to the location where the woman had collapsed. She wanted to find Brian, and she needed to get her Tabiti headpiece, but when she’d finally made her way to where she thought her headpiece should be, it wasn’t there. She pushed her way through the crowd to the booth where Anthony Lang was having pictures taken. She knew Brian would be there. 

Except that there had been a sign saying the photo op had been cancelled, and Brian was nowhere to be found. 

*************************

Meg didn’t appear at ChicagoCon on that Sunday. As disappointed as he’d been the previous day, Brian was far more upset now. He had no way of finding Meg; he didn’t even know her last name. All he knew was that she was a nurse. 

He thought about putting an ad in the Sun Times, or maybe on Craigslist: _We were at ChicagoCon; you were the pretty Tabiti I was hitting on, I was the devilishly handsome Sumendi with the real, working wings. Come try on the headpiece you left behind. If it fits, let’s get married._

“C’mon, Otis, it’s OK. Maybe you’ll run into her somewhere,” Sylvie tried. He was really bumming. She tried to ignore the thought in the back of her mind that, if Joe hadn’t also seen this paragon, Sylvie might not even believe she existed. Sometimes it was a little difficult living with such a hopeless romantic. 

“Yeah, maybe. I’m going to bed. We got shift tomorrow.” 

Poor Otis. “OK,” Sylvie called after him as he headed up the stairs. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Cruz grinned a little sadly. “Poor guy. She was cute. But he’s never gonna see her again. Chicago’s just too big. And who’s to say she’s even from here? She could be from anywhere – from Minneapolis to Indianapolis. It’s a big Con. People come from all over.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, don’t tell _him_ that right now.”

**************** 

“So you met this guy, and then he just _disappeared_?” April Sexton was fascinated. This could only happen to Meg. 

“Yeah, but… Well, no. It was kind of me who disappeared, I think. I got shoved away by the crowd, and when I got back to where he’d been, he was gone. And so was my headpiece.” 

“Ooh, so it’s a clue. You can tell the police to search for your stolen headpiece.” 

Meg scowled at her. “Don’t you have a life to save or something?” 

“OK, sorry, I didn’t mean to make fun of you. It’s kind of romantic. Weird, and dweeby, and a little bit sad, but romantic.” 

_ _Meg gave April the finger behind her scrub jacket so no patients would see. “You are not helping.” _ _

“Look, I have an idea. You’re never gonna find this Brian again. But how about if we get some people together and go to Molly’s after shift? Maybe you’ll meet someone there.” 

Meg thought that sounded like a great idea. 

********************* 

“Hey, Earth to Otis!” Herrmann shouted, smacking Brian on the back of the head. 

“Oh, wha- Sorry.” 

“I could use a little help with these hoses, Space Cowboy.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry.” 

Brian refocused and continued rolling up the hoses they’d been inspecting for damage. Behind him, sitting at the Squad table, Cruz was having a phone conversation with his girlfriend, Chloe. Brian liked Chloe. He liked that Joe had a girlfriend. But it was really hard sometimes to be the third wheel. And somehow today, having met a girl he felt really good about and would, in all likelihood, never see again, it was especially hard hearing Cruz talking ridiculous, gooey crap with Chloe. Brian wanted to talk ridiculous, gooey crap to someone. 

He was glad to hear the alarm go off. He wanted to think about work. 

************ 

Meg had to tell the story another three times at work, and she was tired of it. So when April tried to get her to tell the story to Ethan Choi, she’d begged off. 

“You tell him. You’ve heard it enough times.” 

Maggie Lockwood tried to get her to look on the bright side. “So, you never see this guy again. Big deal. You know he exists, which is proof that guys like that _do_ exist. So now you just have to find another one. Only, next time, maybe you should get his phone number right away. Just in case.” 

“Here’s the part I don’t get. You know this guy’s deepest thoughts on some superhero character who doesn’t exist, but you didn’t think to get the number of his firehouse.” This from Will Halstead, who really wasn’t in much of a position to be judging anyone on their romantic choices. 

“Leave her alone, Will. Nerds are… different.” Maggie and Will shared a laugh that Meg didn’t appreciate. 

“Screw both of you,” Meg said. “The next round’s on you. And the next time either one of you has even the slightest hiccup in your love lives, I’m _so_ mocking the shit out of you.” 

“That’ll be a nice change,” Will smirked, getting up to get another round of drinks. 

Maggie put a hand on Meg’s shoulder. “Hey, all kidding aside. Are you OK?” 

“I’m fine,” Meg answered, smiling more bravely than she felt. “I met the guy once. I talked him for a grand total of like an hour in my entire lifetime. Pretty sure I’m not going to be joining a convent over this. But thanks. It’s just hard, you know? You meet a guy who seems like… Let’s just forget it. Let’s talk about something else.” 

****************** 

“I have an idea,” Stella Kidd said across the dinner table at the firehouse. “I have this friend…” 

Brian groaned. “No more blind dates. No. I refuse.” 

“No, she’s beautiful! You’ll love her. Her name’s Gloria and she…” 

Kelly Severide broke in. “Run, Otis. I’ve met Gloria. Most insecure woman in the world. She’ll – Ow!” 

Kidd had smacked him in the arm, and the sound alone told everyone around the table that it would probably leave a mark. 

“No blind dates. New subject.” Brian was relieved to see that the conversation moved on. 

The evening was quiet at Firehouse 51. Somewhere between the time the early sleepers and the night owls went to bed, Herrmann came over to where Brian was reading a computer gaming magazine. He held his phone in front of the magazine so that Brian could see a picture of a pretty woman about his age. Brian looked up curiously. 

_ _“Cindy’s friend from Zumba. I’ve met her. She’s normal. Divorced, no kids, and this picture was actually taken within the last year. If you want, I can invite you both over for dinner. Or we could go out. No pressure.”_ _

_ _“Why are you doing this?”_ _

_ _“Because I’m sick and tired of your long face and your ‘poor me’ attitude. The sooner you get a girlfriend, the sooner I can stop hearin’ about it. Whaddaya say?”_ _

_ _Brian sighed. “Fine. Set it up.”_ _

_ _“Good man.” _ _

_ _****************_ _

_ _Ethan Choi took the barstool just vacated by Maggie as she went to play darts with Will. _ _

_ _“Hey, Meg, I, um… I’m no good at this stuff, but I do happen to know a guy, if you’re interested in meeting him. He’s a Navy buddy. He’s cool. And a totally nice guy.”_ _

_ _“What’s wrong with him?”_ _

_ _Ethan laughed. “Nothing! He has a job, isn’t fresh off a long-term relationship, not a convicted felon, has a-“_ _

“Wait, not a _convicted_ felon? Meaning what? He was acquitted? He wasn’t caught? What are you telling me here?” 

_ _“Look, if you want, I’ll introduce you. That’s the best I can do. He’s a good guy. Really.”_ _

_ _“He doesn’t play the harmonica, does he?”_ _

_ _“I don’t know. Is that a dealbreaker?”_ _

_ _“Absolutely.”_ _

_ _“OK. Tell you what. I’ll ask him. If he doesn’t play the harmonica,” Ethan gave Meg a sideways scowl that was only half mocking, “I’ll invite him out for a drink after shift. I’ll have him meet me at the hospital. And if you like him, you can join us. If not, you don’t come with us and no one’s the wiser.”_ _

_ _“Huh.” Meg pursed her lips and nodded. “You’re actually kinda OK at this.”_ _

_ _“High praise.”_ _

_ _“Let me meet him first. If he’s all right, then you’ll get high praise. For now, you just don’t suck.”_ _

Ethan shook his head. “The right _guy_ might not actually be your problem,” he muttered as he returned to his seat next to April. Meg laughed. 

************** 

Dinner with the Herrmanns the following week took place at a restaurant that had pretentions to fine dining, but was pretty much a jumped-up family restaurant. It was exactly the kind of place Brian would expect Herrmann and Cindy to go for a romantic dinner. True to Herrmann’s word, Cindy’s friend Theresa looked just like her picture. She was perky and a little bit of a smart aleck, which Brian liked. She smelled great, like lavender and some kind of expensive soap, and she had a seemingly endless supply of funny stories about her job working for the State of Illinois. It was a pretty impressive job, too; she was highly placed in some state agency or another, with a great deal of responsibility. It sounded like she and Brian were fairly well aligned in terms of policy and politics. 

The dinner was long and there was plenty of good wine. Laughter came easily and frequently. By the time it was over, Cindy was mentally planning Brian and Theresa’s wedding. They looked kind of cute together; Theresa’s blonde bob and light blue eyes were a good counterpoint to Brian’s dark hair and eyes, and they were a good height for each other. Cindy kept kicking Christopher under the table and giving him significant looks. He just smiled indulgently. He’d seen this before. He’d wait for the verdict from Otis. Still, things looked promising. 

Theresa thought Brian was about the cutest thing she’d ever seen. Of course, that ridiculous sweater would have to go, and he needed… something done about that weird facial hair. But there was a lot of good raw material to work with there, and he was such a good listener! She liked that he laughed at her jokes, and she appreciated many of the things he said that let her know where he stood on things that were important to her. 

And Brian felt absolutely, positively no chemistry. 

_ _He walked her to her car. In an awkward exchange he had no clue how to avoid, he put her number into his phone, and she did the same with his. He didn’t know whether she expected him to kiss her or hug her or whatever, but he did neither. All he really wanted to do was a massive facepalm. He didn’t do that, either._ _

_ _When she’d driven away, Herrmann and Cindy attacked. _ _

_ _“So? Pretty great, huh? You gonna see her again? Did you make a date?” Cindy enthused._ _

_ _“Well, not exactly-“_ _

_ _“You got her number, though, right?” Herrmann asked._ _

_ _“Yeah, yeah. I got it.”_ _

_ _“And you’re gonna call her, right?” Cindy prodded, actually physically poking him in the side._ _

_ _“Yeah. I guess. Yeah.”_ _

_ _“You do that, Otis. After this, I don’t wanna hear any more gripin’ about your love life, OK?”_ _

_ _“Sure. Thanks, Herrmann.” _ _

_ _Brian waited until he was in his car before he heaved a deep, deep sigh._ _

_ _**********_ _

_ _Ethan Choi’s friend was hot. There was no other word for him. He had longish blond hair that moved as he did, and eyes of an indescribable color of blue. The color of blue inside a glacier, maybe, or perhaps the color of the sky seen from an airplane above the clouds. Meg had expected him to be in good shape; he was (or had been until recently) in the Navy, after all. He didn’t disappoint in that area, either. _ _

_ _So she cheerfully followed the group to Molly’s to get to know him. When he started nuzzling on the neck of her fellow ER nurse Monique an hour later, Meg shook her head, swallowed the rest of her beer and left just before they did. _ _

_ _As she walked out the front door of Molly’s, Brian walked in the back door to begin his shift behind the bar._ _

_ _*****************_ _

_ _Will Halstead came around the corner, nearly colliding with Meg as she hustled to her car accident patient’s room carrying a chest tube tray. Deftly avoiding the crash, Meg muttered something rude but kept going. Her patient was in a bad way, and she needed to get back to Baghdad so Ethan could place the chest tube. _ _

_ _Will continued into the treatment room, tablet in hand, to let Brian know his lab results. “You’re gonna need some FFP, and you’re gonna need to see your hematologist as soon as we can get you in. But it doesn’t look like you’re bleeding anywhere crucial, it’s just a lot of bruising this time.”_ _

_ _Brian looked at the large, dark bruise on his right shoulder. “You sure? ‘Cause this looks bad. And I don’t even know what I did.” __

_ __ _

“C’mon, Otis, you know how ITP works. It could’ve been just a little tap on your shoulder, but when your blood’s not clotting right, this is what you get. That’s what the FFP is for. We’ll get that in and get you set up with your hematologist, get your meds adjusted, and you’ll be fine. You’ve done really well with your diagnosis. Don’t lose heart.” 

_ __ _

Brian sighed. “All right. Fine. It’s just… scary.” 

_ __ _

“I know. But you’re OK. I’ll have Monique get you that FFP.” 

_ __ _

Unfortunately, the patient who had been in the car accident didn’t make it. The team had worked for hours, and tried everything possible, as evidenced by the chaos of far-flung debris Meg and Maggie were cleaning up. They tried to make the trauma room as normal and placid as possible for the family, who would be coming in to say their goodbyes to the patient once she was ready for them to see her. When they had the room as good as it was going to get, Meg went to the desk to chart on the patient while Maggie went to the waiting room to escort the grieving family to their loved one. 

_ __ _

Monique walked over to the desk, searching around the computer where Meg was working. “What are you looking for?” 

_ __ _

_ _“Some paperwork for Zvonecek, my ITP patient? You seen it?” Monique asked._ _

_ __ _

_ _“No. Sorry.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“Otis was here?” Maggie asked, arriving at that moment._ _

_ __ _

_ _“Yeah. Left about half an hour ago. He’s fine. Just some bruising, needed some FFP. But I can’t find that paperwork.” Monique continued her search, moving along to the other side of the desk._ _

_ __ _

_ _*******************_ _

_ __ _

_ _A week later, Sylvie Brett and Emily Foster brought a kid to the ER with smoke inhalation. The kid was doing poorly, but the fire was out and they wanted to stick around and see how the little boy did. While they waited for his latest blood gas results, they had a cup of coffee with Meg and April, just catching up. _ _

_ __ _

_ _“How’s everybody at 51?” April asked._ _

_ __ _

_ _“Oh, you know. The same. Herrmann’s freaking out about a health department inspection at Molly’s, and Otis has a broken heart,” Sylvie answered, smiling affectionately. _ _

_ __ _

_ _“Oh, no! Who broke Otis’s heart this time?” April laughed._ _

_ __ _

_ _“Some girl he barely met.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“Hey, Meg had that same thing happen to her. We should get these two together.” _ _

_ __ _

_ _Meg held up her hands. “No way. I’m entirely done with blind dates, and I’ve heard too many Otis stories. Leave me out of it. Poor shmuck sounds like a trainwreck.” _ _

_ __ _

_ _“No, he’s cute, though. He’s my roommate, I can vouch for him.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“Then you date him. I’m going to check on Tyler’s O2 sat.” Meg went into the little boy’s room before she could get roped into another humiliating experience like she’d had with her friend’s cousin Harold or Ethan’s Navy friend._ _

_ __ _

_ _The little boy, Tyler, eventually stabilized and was admitted, so Brett and Foster left to return to the firehouse. It had been a while since they’d all had a chance to talk, though, so they decided to meet at Molly’s the following Friday, the next time they’d all be off shift. _ _

_ __ _

_ _

_ __ _

_ _*****************_ _

_ __ _

_ _Molly’s was packed. It was a Friday night, for one thing, and it also happened to be payday for City of Chicago employees, so everyone was in a good mood. Besides which, the first snowflakes of the season had just begun to fall outside._ _

_ __ _

_ _Brian was hustling down in the storage room, trying to make sense of a delivery that had come in late that afternoon and keep up with the continual calls for re-stocking that kept coming from up in the bar. He hauled a case of bottled IPA up the stairs, then turned to set it heavily down on the floor behind the bar. As he did, he thought he caught a glimpse of a familiar dark copper hair color. He did a quick double-take, but whoever it had been had melted into the standing-room-only crowd. Besides, by this time, he was pretty sure he’d imagined the girl he’d met at ChicagoCon, Tabiti headdress or not. He knelt down and began loading the bottles of ale into the cooler. _ _

_ __ _

Meg blinked, then turned slowly around. She thought she saw… No. When she looked behind the bar, the only people tending it were Herrmann and Stella, and another bartender she didn’t know. _Good grief. Now I’m hallucinating. This might be a good night to just curl up with a book._

_ __ _

Meg returned to her table with a fresh round of drinks. Sylvie was gushing about her new boyfriend, Kyle, a CFD chaplain, of all things. She really liked him, and it appeared he liked her just as much. Foster was excited about some girl she’d met at a training the week before, who was supposedly going to show up at Molly’s tonight. Things seemed to be heating up for Ethan and April again, and even Will was apparently interested in an FBI agent who had been involved in the case in which he’d been kidnapped on the day he was supposed to marry Natalie Manning. Meg felt lonely, even in a pressing crowd of people, most of whom she knew. 

_ __ _

_ _Brian noticed Kelly and Stella making goo goo eyes at each other over the bar, not an uncommon occurrence these days, but not something he was really in a mood to appreciate when he was as busy as he was, and when he was feeling kind of left out. Everyone seemed to be in love. The Chief was sitting a couple of stools down from Severide, flirting with his wife, who was sitting next to Matt Casey and the reporter he was seeing since they’d been investigating those trailer fires together. Even Capp, at the far end of the bar, was having a very cozy discussion with a guy who seemed to be very interested, given their body language. Definitely time to get back downstairs and get some more of that delivery sorted._ _

_ __ _

_ _When Emily Foster’s new crush showed up, Meg decided it was time to go. She was really not feeling this night. The girl, Amanda, was adorable, and seemed to be quite into Emily. Not only that, but she was great. Everyone liked her. Yeah, it was definitely time for Meg to call it a night. She couldn’t even be happy for her friends. _ _

_ __ _

_ _“Hey, guys, I’m gonna head out,” Meg announced as she finished her beer._ _

_ __ _

_ _“What, so soon?” Sylvie asked, surprised._ _

_ __ _

_ _“Yeah, I’m exhausted. Long week. I’ve got a hot date with my pillow. Sorry.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _Meg pulled on her peacoat as everyone said their goodbyes, shouting over the din of the masses crammed into Molly’s. She tried to smile, which actually wasn’t as hard as it could have been, because she was pretty relieved to be getting out of there. _ _

_ __ _

_ _The stack of boxes of dry goods wasn’t going to make it through the gauntlet behind the bar to the storage closet on the other side. Not with the extra buckets of ice and boxes of bottled beer back there, to say nothing of the bartenders running around trying to serve the capacity crowd. Brian decided he needed to wheel his hand truck out the back door and around to the front. He’d still have to make it past a lot of people, but it was a short distance, and he didn’t think they’d mind moving out of his way. Everyone was having a pretty good time. Everyone but him, that was. _ _

_ __ _

_ _He pulled the hand truck up the stairs and out onto the sidewalk at the side of the bar, then headed to the corner of the building._ _

_ __ _

_ _Meg waved at those who caught her eye, dipping her shoulder and turning to the side to slip through the partying throng to the door. Gratefully, she pulled it open and stepped out into the much cooler air outside, where fat snowflakes were lazily swirling down through the night air and just beginning to whiten the sidewalks. She stood for a second, taking a deep breath of the fresh air and admiring the prettiness of the snowflakes in the light of the streetlamp._ _

_ __ _

_ _Hearing a noise to her right, she turned to see a hand truck emerge around the corner of the building. Behind it, also looking up at the snow, was Brian. Brian from ChicagoCon. _ _

_ __ _

_ _Meg sucked in her breath in surprise, catching his attention. Brian stopped in his tracks, the look on his face mirroring the shock on her own._ _

_ __ _

_ _“Brian?” Meg asked, her brows drawn together as if she couldn’t quite make sense of what she was seeing._ _

_ __ _

_ _“It’s you,” he said, rather obviously. And then he smiled._ _

_ __ _

_ _That smile was all it took to let Meg know that this was, in fact, the man she’d met at ChicagoCon and come to believe she’d never see again. Laughter bubbled up from a sudden sense of the impossibility of this happening, and the joy that it actually was._ _

_ __ _

_ _“I thought I imagined you. I looked for you everywhere,” she said breathlessly._ _

_ __ _

_ _“Me, too. I even went back the next day. I… I have your helmet. Headpiece. Whatever.” His smile was dazzling, and Meg found his sudden gawky insecurity as charming as anything he’d done so far. _ _

_ __ _

“Yeah, I… Who _are_ you? What are you doing here?” 

_ __ _

_ _Brian laughed adorably. “I work here. I’m one of the owners.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“But I know all the owners. Except one, and his name is Otis.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _Now Brian really laughed, and ran a hand through his thick, black hair. “That’s me. I’m Otis. I mean, they call me that. It’s not my name or anything.”_ _

_ __ _

”_You’re_ Otis? That’s _you_? But I’ve been hearing about you forever. How come we never met?” 

_ __ _

_ _“I don’t know. Do you come here a lot?”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“Are you kidding? I work in the ER at Med. I’m here all the time with the crew.”_ _

_ __ _

Brian shook his head. “This is incredible. We know, like, _all_ the same people. How have we never met before this?” 

_ __ _

_ _“Well… we have.” Meg smiled happily and Brian set the hand truck up on its base, leaning on the handle._ _

_ __ _

_ _“I guess that’s right,” he said. “And now here we are. So, listen… would you want to come in? Have a drink with me?”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“No.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _His face fell. “Oh, I… sorry…”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“I’m not moving from this spot until you put your phone number in my phone. And your name. Your whole name. And an address. Just in case. Do you have an emergency contact? Put them in, too.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _There came that blinding smile again. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket as she pulled hers from her jacket._ _

_ __ _

_ _“It’s Zvonecek. Brian Zvonecek.” _ _

_ __ _

_ _“Oh, boy. Here, put it in my phone. I’ll have to work on pronouncing that.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“What’s yours?”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“Armstrong.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“That one, I think I can handle.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _They traded phones and put their contact information in. _ _

_ __ _

_ _“Za-von-eh-check, huh? What’s that, Polish?”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“Russian.” Brian said something in Russian and Meg felt a definite weakness in her knees._ _

_ __ _

_ _“I have no idea what you just said, but whatever it was, it was… wow.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“Well, if you liked that, I got a whole lot more to say to you. How about that drink?”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“Lead the way. Otis.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“You call me Otis, I call you Margaret.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“Yikes. You play hardball.”_ _

_ __ _

_ _“Just letting you know the rules.”_ _

_ __ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't worry too much about timelines. Sorry if that bothers you. I like who I like, and I put them in, even if timeline-wise it wouldn't work that way.


	3. The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian "Otis" Zvonecek and OC Meg Armstrong continue their surprise reunion at Molly's, then go out on their first official date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***Chicago Fire writers gonna kill Otis? Screw that noise. I’mma keep him alive, and he’s gonna GET SOME, too. Just you watch me.****

It was so crowded in Molly’s that Brian and Meg ended up taking bottles of beer and sitting on the stairs down to the storage room, which was actually kind of romantic. There was a fun party happening mere feet away, but they could hear each other talk, and sit comfortably, and had privacy. Every once in a while, Brian had to run something up to the bar, but that wasn’t too much of a problem. He decided he’d worry about organizing the storage room tomorrow. Or next month.

They smiled a ridiculous amount. In fact, at one point, Meg put her hand to her cheek, saying, “I can’t seem to stop smiling. I’m not usually this much of a goofball. And I’m a little worried about my temporomandibular joint.”

Which, of course, only made Brian smile more. “Don’t worry about it. You have a nice smile.” He blushed and looked away. “Yeah. I _am_ usually this much of a goofball.”

Meg laughed. “So you said something in Russian before. What did you say?”

“I said ‘second-generation American’. Not very creative, I guess.”

“But interesting. Do you actually _speak_ Russian?”

“Yeah. I have to, my Baba doesn’t speak any English.”

“Your…”

“Grandmother. She understands every word you say to her in English. But she didn’t bother to learn to speak it. She says if you want to know what she has to say, you’re going to have to learn her language.”

“She sounds cool.”

“She’s very cool. My family spoke nothing but Russian at our house when I was growing up. She and my Deda – my grandfather – lived with us until he passed away when I was in high school.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.”

“Siblings?”

“An older sister.”

“You’re so lucky! You guys had like a secret language that you could speak to each other and no one would know what you were saying.”

“Theoretically, yes. But we weren’t exactly the ‘secret language speaking’ kind of siblings. She would only talk to me in public to tell me what an idiot I was and to scram.”

“You sure we’re not related? That sounds an awful lot like my sister.” 

Stella put her head around the corner to yell down the stairs for some wine. 

“Duty calls,” Brian said, touching Meg on the shoulder as he got up to get the bottle and causing an infestation of butterflies in her stomach. 

******************

It had been early when Meg had begun to leave Molly’s, only to run into Brian. At 2 a.m., closing time, Brian and Meg were still sitting together on the steps down to the storage room, sipping beers and getting to know one another. Brian was halfway in love already. He always fell too hard, too fast, but this girl… Well, he’d see. And she seemed into him, too. 

Eventually, at almost 3 a.m., Herrmann finally had to go to the door and yell down to them that it was time to leave.

“We already did all the work, thanks for your help, Otis,” he said grumpily. Meg was horrified, thinking she’d gotten Brian into trouble, but Brian just smiled up at Herrmann. 

“Hey, thanks, partner. Appreciate it.” He helped Meg up and they ascended the stairs into the empty bar where, true to Herrmann’s word, all the closing work had already been done.

Meg felt the gentle pressure of Brian’s hand on her back as he escorted her through the door into the snowy street. There wasn’t much snow, maybe two inches or so, but the flurries were still falling, and the night was beautiful and full of the soft magic of the first snow. 

“Can I walk you home?” Brian asked.

“I’d love that, if it isn’t too far out of your way.” 

“It’s not.” 

Meg thought to mention that Brian didn’t know where she lived, but she wasn’t ready to say good night yet, and she thought a romantic walk through the snowy night would be perfect. So she just smiled up at him. He slid his hands into the pockets of his shearling coat, and held out his elbow to Meg. She had loved that move every time she’d ever seen it in the movies, and it captivated her when Brian did it. She gleefully tucked her arm into his. 

She almost wished she lived further away from Molly’s. The six blocks went too fast. Meg lived in an old brick townhouse with a stoop, in the smallest apartment on the top floor. It was cramped and inconvenient, and she loved it. It allowed her to live by herself and yet feel completely safe, because she knew everyone else in the building, and they knew her. Also, because if she was ever in trouble, she could alert the other neighbors on her floor simply by saying so in a normal tone of voice. The walls were paper-thin. 

Meg stood on the first step of the stoop and turned to Brian. Their eyes were level, and she still had her arm through his. Looking into his liquid brown eyes, Meg didn’t think she was actually swooning, but that word did come into her mind. He was very, very cute. She suddenly really wanted him to kiss her. 

“I’d like to see you again,” he said softly, smiling uncertainly.

“Me, too. I don’t really know how we’ve avoided it so far.”

“Right?”

“But now that we have met, I’m wondering… I have tickets for the Planetary Saviors movie opening night at the Rivoli.”

“Shut up!”

“Would you like to go with me?”

“Would I like to? I’d kill to!”

“Well, luckily for you, you won’t have to go that far. I was going to go with my friend, Lita, but she isn’t that into them. She won’t mind at all.”

“Are you sure?”

“Completely. And I’m also sure that you’re cuter than Lita.” Meg began to blush before she’d even finished her sentence. Where had that come from – well, she knew where it had come from, but what had possessed her to say it out loud?

Brian’s blinding smile and slight answering blush made the cringe worthwhile, however, especially when he said, “I think you’re pretty cute, too.”

All Meg could think to do was smile. Brian cleared his throat nervously.

“So, next Saturday then,” he said.

“Next Saturday. But you could, you know… call me before that. You know, if you want.”

“I will.”

“Good. I’ll, uh… answer.”

With another of those smiles, he took a step back and began to turn away. “So, good night,” he said uncertainly.

“Good night. I’m really glad we ran into eachother. Really glad.”

“Me, too.” He turned and began to walk away, while Meg stood and watched. When he’d gone about ten steps, she could stand it no longer.

“Brian,” she called, running to him and throwing her arms around his neck for a hug. He eagerly caught her in his arms. She looked up at him, smiling, and he tilted his head down to kiss her softly. 

“Really glad,” he said, smiling into her eyes. 

*****************

They had decided not to dress as Sumendi and Tabiti for the premiere. In the privacy of his own mind, Brian had several reasons for that, the primary one being that he could not for the life of him imagine how he could make a romantic move wearing Sumendi’s body suit, a cape, and fully-operational wings. And as many times as he’d replayed Meg coming toward him from her stoop to hug him, and kissing her in the snow that night, he was dead-set on making a romantic move. 

He did, however, bring Meg’s Tabiti headpiece with him when he picked her up. It was time it was returned to its rightful owner. Looking at it as he waited for Meg to come down to the front door of her building, he smiled thinking how he’d felt that Sunday when she hadn’t shown up at ChicagoCon to reclaim it and he’d thought he’d never see her again. This was only their second – or was it technically the first? – date, but they’d talked a lot on the phone, and had coffee twice at Med when Brian had been there for work reasons. Or, what he told Meg were work reasons. He thought that, if he’d known how great she’d turn out to be, he would have been even more disappointed than he had been not to find her that second day at the Con. 

She laughed when she saw him holding the headpiece. “You really brought it!”

“I told you I would,” he said, momentarily a little taken by surprise by how pretty she looked. Her coppery hair was softly curled and she wore just a hint more makeup than she usually wore at work. The thought that she’d made herself look especially nice for a date with him made his heart flutter a little, and caused other… manifestations.

“I’m gonna run this up to my apartment,” she said, turning to the stairs. “I’ll just be a sec.”

He waited while she ran lightly up the creaky wooden stairway to her third-floor apartment. Brian liked the venerable little townhouse. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected given the age of the building – maybe a smell of stale cooking and a general dilapidation – but he didn’t smell anything, and the small foyer was freshly painted. The firefighter in him wanted to check the wiring in the old building, but he thought that was probably more appropriate for a future date. As quickly as she’d run upstairs, Meg reappeared, peacoat in hand.

Brian helped her put her peacoat on over her fuzzy pink sweater. She shivered just a little at the gentlemanly courtesy, and at the contact. She’d been really looking forward to this date. Sure, she was excited to see the Planetary Saviors movie, but she was much more excited to get to spend some more time with Brian. He looked great in his jeans and what she suspected was a new plaid button-down shirt, and he smelled wonderful. She didn’t recognize the cologne, but she liked it, and she was impressed that he had used just the right amount.

They left Brian’s car in front of Meg’s house and held hands as they walked the two blocks to the El stop. The Rivoli was downtown and was actually a complex of several movie theaters, three of which were showing the Planetary Saviors movie. Meg hadn’t told Brian, because she wanted it to be a surprise, but they were actually going to see the movie in IMAX 3-D. She hoped he’d like that.

Brian was beside himself when the ticket taker handed them 3-D glasses. 

“You’re kidding me,” he said, his eyes wide and his mouth tentatively curving up in a smile. “3-D?”

“IMAX 3-D,” Meg said, putting on her glasses and smiling back as his face lit up.

“Holy crap!” He cried, impulsively hugging her as he laughed with joyful surprise. 

Brian bought them popcorn and sodas, and they made their way to their seats. The first thing they did after making themselves comfortable was to take selfies in their 3-D glasses. That important task completed, they began looking around to check out people’s costumes. Fully a quarter of the audience had come in costume, but Meg couldn’t see a Sumendi would could compare with Brian’s costume from ChicagoCon, and she said so. He, of course, responded that there wasn’t a Tabiti in the room anywhere near as good as hers. 

“Hey, Meg,” Brian said, a little shyly. “If I forget to say so, thank you for tonight. This is really great.”

She smiled down at him from where she knelt on her seat, looking around at all the costumes. “Thanks for saying yes.” She thought about leaning over and giving him just a little kiss, but didn’t find the courage. 

Suddenly, three very large men in their early thirties entered the aisle in front of Brian and Meg, taking the seats just in front of them.

“Otis!” One of them shouted from three feet away. “Hey, guys, it’s Otis!” 

“Hey, Reeves,” Otis said warily. 

One of the other guys, who was wearing a CFD T-shirt a couple sizes too tight to show off his arms, reached over the seat to grasp hands heartily with Brian. “Otis!”

“Bradley.” To be fair, Meg thought, Bradley had serious guns. If she had those biceps, she’d probably wear too-tight T-shirts, as well. 

Brian nodded to the third guy, who didn’t look particularly pleased to see him. The guy turned to Meg. 

“And who’s this?” He asked, reaching a hand out to her. She turned and sat down in her seat, putting her hand out. She expected him to shake it, but he turned it and placed a wet kiss on her knuckles. She tried not to show it, but it squicked her out a little.

“I’m Meg,” she said, suddenly recognizing the guy from an on-the-job injury he’d had that had brought him to Med once. He’d been a little handsy then, too. She wasn’t sure whether the HIPAA laws would allow her to remind him where they’d met before in front of other people, so she acted as though she didn’t recognize him. Clearly, he didn’t remember her. 

“So, Otis has a girlfriend,” the guy said, still holding her hand. “I’m Kevin Brown. I could tell you some hilarious stories about this guy.”

“Movie’s about to start,” Brian tried.

“I remember one time when we were on Ladder 26…”

“No one wants to hear your boring stories, Brown,” Reeves said. “Sit y’ass down.” 

Brian made a mental note to buy Reeves a beer next time he was in Molly’s. 

“Naw, man, Meg needs to hear this,” Brown persisted. “So there’s Otis, tryna get the ladder to extend, and he’s gettin’ all nervous and fouled up in the hydraulics. There’s a lady in a window, screamin’. ‘Oh, lawdy, hep me, hep me!’ and smoke pourin’ out from behind her. And Otis is just completely hopeless, moving the ladder away rather than toward the window, and the lady’s all, ‘Hep me Jesus!’ and Otis is just shittin’ his drawers…”

Brian’s discomfort was palpable, and Meg put a hand on his arm. “Mr. Brown?” She said a little loudly, stopping his story. “May I ask you about the ethnicity of the woman in the window?”

“The…” Brown was nonplussed.

“She’s tryin’ to tell you you’re bein’ a racist asshole again,” Reeves said. Brian increased his free beer tally to two.

“Naw, but…”

Fortunately for everyone, the lights dimmed at that moment. Brown sat down, and received a dig in the elbow and a grunted curse from Bradley, sitting next to him. 

“Sorry about that,” Brian whispered to Meg, taking the hand she still had on his arm into his. She moved her hand so they could entwine their fingers, and bumped Brian’s shoulder a little with hers.

“No worries,” she said. “But if they talk during the movie, can I borrow your Halligan?”

“It’s in my other pants,” he grinned. “But whatever you need to do, I’ve got your back.”

****************

The movie was fantastic. At first, it was a little distracting to be holding hands with Meg. For one thing, Brian couldn’t comfortably eat his popcorn. But he wasn’t about to let go, and neither was she. Soon enough, they were both fully immersed in the sensory assault of the story and figured out the logistics of holding and eating popcorn with one hand. They very quickly forgot about the firefighters in front of them, who were just as enthralled as they were, and made noise only when the rest of the crowd was also laughing or cheering. By the time it was over, Brian and Meg were almost tired from the experience. 

Walking out of the theater into the Chicago night, Brian again took Meg’s hand. It was starting to feel natural. 

“Do you want to get a drink, or…?” He asked.

“Yeah, I guess so. But you know what would feel good after sitting in the movie? We could walk a little. Maybe over to the river?” 

Brian liked that idea very much. He settled in beside her and they strolled down the street toward a little park overlooking the river, just enjoying the night and the buildings and lights and, especially, each other. When they reached the river, they leaned against the railing, appreciating the reflection of the buildings on either side as it flickered and shimmered on the water. 

“This is nice,” Meg said, snuggling against Brian’s side. He put his arm around her and squeezed her a little. 

“Very nice.” 

He took a deep breath and decided there was no better time to do what he’d been contemplating since she’d suggested walking to the river. He reached his hand across to lightly, gently touch her chin, turning her face to his. He heard her breath catch, and felt a shiver at the small smile on her lips as she tipped her face up to meet his lips. This was a different kiss than the light smooch he’d given her that first night. This kiss had some heat, some intention. And it lasted long enough for both of them to find themselves moving to get closer together. Meg decided it would be a bad move to unsnap Brian’s coat so she could put her arms inside, but it was very tempting. Over the course of several minutes, they became more relaxed, their kisses more fluid, as they learned the shape of eachother’s lips and mouths, and began to lose themselves in the moment and each other. Meg felt Brian cup her face in both hands. She had always wanted a man to do that, and it felt as loving as she’d always imagined it would. She shivered.

“You getting cold?” He asked, solicitous and concerned.

“No,” she smiled. “I’m not cold.” 

“Maybe we should go get that drink.”

“Sounds good.”

Once again, he put his hands in his pockets and she took his arm as they walked. Brian was a little self-conscious – and a bit uncomfortable, to be honest – and glad that his shearling coat was thigh-length. Those had been some really nice kisses. He tried not to think about it, but he wondered what might happen when he walked her home.

The bar they chose had a lot of chrome and colored lights and, although there was no dance floor, the music was a little loud for conversation. Brian didn’t mind as much as he might have, because it meant they had to sit very close together and lean in. They managed to thoroughly discuss the movie that way, and Brian also took a few opportunities to kiss Meg when they presented themselves. 

When they finished their drinks, they decided to head back to the El. They kicked around the idea of having another drink at Molly’s but, in truth, they both preferred to be alone together. And they were both spending more time thinking about the idea of being alone together in private. 

Reaching Meg’s El stop, they descended the stairs to the street and walked, again hand in hand, the two blocks to her apartment. They were laughing and joking, now in a bit sillier mood than they’d been in at the bar. In part, that was because they were both self-conscious about how the night was going to end. 

Meg had decided that she was going to invite Brian up to her apartment for a drink. That was the oldest line in the book, but it was also by far the most successful, and he was definitely giving her signals that he’d say yes. So, when they reached her stoop, she turned to him.

“I have some RumChata, if you’d like to come up.”

He made a face. “Um… I’d really like to come up, but I need to admit that I have no idea what RumChata is.”

She laughed as she turned to climb the steps to the door. “Come on up and find out.”

“Am I going to have to talk about it in Confession?” He asked, suddenly feeling very flirty.

“Are you Catholic?”

“No.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” she smiled, winking as she unlocked the door. He was beginning to be glad for the length of his coat again.

Brian followed Meg up the creaky stairs to her apartment, trying to be quiet but finding it difficult because there didn’t seem to be anywhere he could step that didn’t make a squeak. Even the banister squeaked as he held it. “Noisy stairs,” he whispered loudly.

“I know. We’re all used to it. No secrets in this building, I’m afraid.”

Meg’s apartment was tiny, but very comfortable. She had just enough room in her living area for a large, deep couch with lots of throw pillows and a small coffee table in front of it, facing an entertainment center. The first thing Brian noticed when she flicked on a lamp on the sole side table was that she had the latest gaming system – one version newer than the one he had. 

“You have the PlayBox 5!”

“Yeah, I do. And not only that,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows at him, “but I have the new BattleGround Jupiter.” She held up the plastic case for a game disc.

“Get outta here! Have you played? How is it?”

“If you want, we can play it right now. But it’s gonna have to be on low volume. The walls are pretty thin, and my neighbors are light sleepers. I usually wear headphones when I play.”

“I’m so in! I can be quiet,” Brian said, his face lit up like a child’s and his excited whisper full of eagerness. 

“You set it up. I’ll get the drinks.”

“So it’s a drink. That- thing you said.”

“RumChata. You’ll love it.”

Meg came to sit next to Brian just as he had the game up on the TV screen and had programmed it for two players. He handed Meg a controller and she handed him a glass with a milky, caramel-colored beverage over a couple of ice cubes. Clinking their glasses together, they each took a sip.

“Oh, that’s good,” Brian said. 

“I thought you’d like it. Now, you ready to get humiliated?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I _have_ played BattleGround Jupiter before.”

“All right. Show me whatcha got, hotshot.” 

They set their drinks down on the coffee table and began to play. It was hard to keep quiet, because they were both pretty good at the game, which made it a challenge, and they were both competitive. They’d been playing for about half an hour when they came to the last point.

“OK, here we go. This is it. Winner becomes the ruler of the entire planet, and all its moons,” Meg said. The score was even.

Brian sat back and finished his drink, a contemplative look on his face. “Like _that’s_ a prize. I’m thinking we should up the stakes.”

Meg raised an eyebrow. “What’s better than ruling Jupiter?”

“I’m glad you asked, young Paduan. Kissing. Kissing the ruler of Jupiter.” 

“Really.”

“Oh, yes. So I’m thinking that, if you win, I have to kiss the ruler of Jupiter. And, if I win, you do.”

She tilted her head, a quizzical expression on her face. “But, if…”

“What, are you chicken?” He smiled that irresistible smile, but with a definite amorous edge.

Meg couldn’t help but laugh out loud. She put a hand over her mouth, then leaned toward Brian, whispering, “You’re on. Prepare to kiss the ruler of Jupiter.”

“Yeah, put your lasers where your mouth is.”

Once the game restarted, it took Brian about five seconds to become the ruler of Jupiter, and all its moons. Meg collapsed against the backrest of the couch, letting her game controller fall to the tabletop. 

“Oh, that was painful.”

“Yes, I’m sure it was.”

He set his game controller on the coffee table and turned his body toward her. “You ready to pay up?”

She heaved a melodramatic sigh and sat up, turning toward him. “If I must.”

“Well, if you really don’t want to kiss the ruler of Jupiter…”

“Actually, I kind of do want to kiss the ruler of Jupiter.”

“Then get over here.”

It didn’t take very long for the kisses between Brian and Meg to get serious. They’d both been thinking about seriously kissing each other for the past several hours. Within a short time, they were lying side by side on the couch, which required a fair amount of teamwork given that the couch, though deep, was still not entirely wide enough for them both. Over the course of several adjustments in their arrangements, some having to do with comfort but more having to do with… positioning, Meg found herself essentially on her back with Brian on his side next to her. He was getting progressively bolder with his stroking of her fuzzy sweater.

“I really like how this sweater feels,” he murmured, playing with one of the buttons.

“Yeah? I was hoping you would like it,” she breathed. 

“I do.”

“I was kinda hoping, with the buttons, you might… wanna take it off,” Meg risked. 

“Were you?” Brian chuckled, recapturing her lips as he unbuttoned the button he’d been playing with.

“Kinda how I roll,” she giggled. 

By the time Brian left Meg’s apartment that night, he thought he might be in love. And he definitely had a serious thing for pink, fuzzy sweaters.


	4. The House Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian "Otis" Zvonecek and his girlfriend have been taken hostage by an evil old witch who has terrible plans for Brian! Can they find a way to escape?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of this chapter, putting Brian and Meg in another fairy tale. Hope it worked. Do you know what fairy tale it is?

“Mrs. Forscher, you need to let Brian out of that room.” Meg decided to try reasoning with the hideous old woman. “This is a serious crime you’re committing here, and it’s only a matter of time before Brian’s roommates miss him and send help. They know where we went.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Meg dear. Remember, my address isn’t in the Craigslist ad. And remember, too, even with my address _and_ directions, you two had a terrible time finding my house.” The woman’s voice was thin and cracked, and her attempt at a kind smile looked more like a threat, given the horrible state of her teeth.

“How could you possibly _know_ that?” Meg shouted, becoming more frustrated by the moment.

“Is it important? I just seem to know things. Now, shall we get this blood drawn so we can begin our work? I’d like to get a baseline level.”

“A baseline level of _what_?”

“Of the potion Brian is testing for me.”

“What!” Brian shrieked. “I’m not going to take any drug. Forget it!”

“But you’ve already taken it, Brian, my dear. In your tea.”

Both Brian and Meg let out horrified gasps.

“You _drugged_ me?” He cried. “What did you give me?”

“Why, that’s the best part,” the hag answered calmly and proudly. “It’s my own formula. It will make me young and beautiful again. It’s finally ready. I’m about to be free from this grotesque form!” Her eyes glowed maniacally.   
“That’s… That’s so many kinds of wrong… You can’t test a drug on a prisoner in your house! You can’t test a drug on a human without a metric crapton of informed consent! And… And… Brian is _already_ young and beautiful!” Meg was pacing and waving her arms in her agitation. “How would you even be able to tell if it’s working?”

“That’s not exactly how it works, dearie. The boy is given the lebkuchen and we wait for it to achieve the right level in his blood.”

“What’s libkoo- whatever you said?”

“Lebkuchen. It’s what I’ve named my potion.”

“Well, how, exactly, does the potion make _you_ young and beautiful if _he’s_ the one who took it?”

“Is it important? That’s just how it works. Now, if you’re done proving to yourself that you don’t have a choice, shall we begin?”

Brian’s voice was low, almost a growl. ”_If the drug is in my blood, how does it get into you_?”

The huge, ugly woman sighed. “You won’t like it.”

“I already fucking _hate_ all of this, lady! What are you planning to do?” He shouted.

“My boy, I’m afraid I’ll have to have a transfusion of your blood once it’s achieved the right level of the potion.”

“Oh, _hell_ no!” Meg shrieked. “No. If you think I’m going to help you with any of this…”

“Oh, I know you will, dear Meg. But you’ll be all right. Once the project is finished, you can go on your way.”

“_I_ can go on my way? What about Brian?”

“Well… I suppose I could let you take him with you. He’ll be heavy, of course, but you can probably manage.”

“Listen to me, Mrs. Forscher-“

“Granny, please.”

“_Mrs. Forscher_, I demand that you explain what you mean by that. Why won’t Brian be able to walk out of here? Just how much blood do you need for this project of yours?”  
“Why, all of it, of course.” The evil old hag’s creaky, cracked voice was perfectly nonchalant as she announced her intention to kill Brian.

Brian had to sit down. He held his head and groaned. “This can’t be happening.”

Meg had heard enough. With a wordless cry, she ran down the hall, through the parlor, past the front door and began to search for a kitchen. She was going to have to take her chances with a knife, or whatever other weapons she could find. This insane old crone was planning to _murder_ Brian! 

The kitchen was as spotless as the rest of the house. As the old woman had said, there were knives there, and Meg chose the largest one she could find. She found a rolling pin as she frantically searched the drawers, and took that with her, as well, as she tore back through the house to the hallway where Brian was imprisoned. 

Meg held the knife up, ready to stab down into the horrible hag’s chest. “Don’t make me do this. I don’t want to hurt you. But I won’t let you hurt Brian, and I certainly won’t let you kill him.”

“I understand, my dear,” the old woman wheezed calmly. “Do what you must.”

Meg took a deep breath and screamed as she brought the knife down as hard as she could into the woman’s chest. Except it didn’t go in. It was as though Meg was stabbing stone. The knife made a bit of a hole in the ratty sweater she wore, and a tiny tear in the shapeless dress beneath, but simply stopped there. Again, trying to hurt the woman had hurt Meg’s arm, but the woman did not react at all. 

“_What the hell are you_?”

“I am as you see me, Meg dear. Now, I’m afraid I really must insist that we get the first blood draw done.”

The woman who called herself Granny held out the small metal tray to Meg. “Shall we?”

Meg was so shaken by what had happened that she simply dropped the knife to the floor and took the tray from her. “I won’t hurt Brian,” she whispered weakly.

“Of course not, dearie. It’s just a simple blood draw.”

Brian, still sitting on the floor behind the grate, his head in his hands, asked, “What if we refuse? What if we just won’t do it?”

“That would prolong your stay, of course, but eventually you will help me with my project. It’s why you’re here, dear.” 

“Why would we help you, especially if it means you’re going to kill me?” Incredulous, Brian rattled the grate in his frustration.

“You must eat, of course. And drink.”

“And you’ll just put more of this shit in my food or drink, right?”

“Of course, dear boy.” The harridan’s thin, cracked voice only made the hellish things she said more terrifying.

Brian looked down again, clutching handfuls of his hair. 

“Don’t even think about it, Brian. We’ll figure something out. I’m not helping this bitch kill you. It’s not happening.” 

“Just… for now… maybe we should go along.”

“No!”

“Meg, it’s not like I haven’t had blood drawn before. It’s no big deal. There’s not a chance in hell we’re doing any fatal transfusions, but let’s just go along for now. C’mon.”

He held his arm out through the grate. For a long time, Meg just stood, holding the little metal tray, but didn’t move.

“Just do it, Meg. It’s OK,” he said tenderly. 

They looked into one another’s eyes as she knelt in front of him, setting the tray on the floor. “I’m not going to hurt you,” Meg said shakily.

“I know. We’ll figure it out.” Brian tried to smile reassuringly as Meg expertly tied the rubber tourniquet around his forearm. 

“At least you have great veins,” she sighed.

“You say that to all the guys.”

It took Meg less than a minute to fill the small vial on the tray with Brian’s blood. She put the small bandage on where she’d punctured his skin and kissed it. As she did, a tear fell from her eye onto his arm.   
“Don’t cry, sweetie. We’ll be OK. Promise.” Brian smiled as best he could and squeezed Meg’s hand. 

“We will.” It was a vow.

Meg stood and handed the tray, with the now-full vial, to the crone and snarled, “Now what?” 

“Now we take this to the laboratory. Follow me.” 

The woman shuffled down the hall and Meg followed, sending a backward look to Brian just before going into the parlor. He blew her a kiss, but his eyes were troubled.

The laboratory was, naturally, in the cellar of the dark, creepy house. The worn, splintered stairs emitted a chorus of squeaks and pops as the old woman and Meg descended, and after the dim gloom of the house, Meg was stunned to see that the cellar was brightly lit with fluorescent fixtures hung from the ceiling. There was a long, L-shaped counter with shelves underneath, and modern electronic equipment for doing all sorts of blood analysis lined the surface. _Where had she gotten all this? What did she_ do _down here_? Beside a centrifuge was an assortment of beakers, flasks, and other glassware, with frames for supporting it over one of the several Bunsen burners. The laboratory was clearly the source of the slight chemical smell in the house. _This was insane_.

As strange and surprising as its presence was, the laboratory equipment wasn’t the most troubling item in the cellar. That was the medical exam table, complete with several sets of leather straps, just beyond the counter full of equipment. Meg felt a wave of nausea. The table was as clean as everything else in the creepy house, but there were a few nicks in the shiny black padding, and more than one deep crease in the leather straps - clear marks of having been used. 

Meg tried to listen as the woman showed her how to use the centrifuge, and then to prepare the plasma for analysis. There was a small, odd-looking machine that appeared to have been taken apart and re-assembled slightly differently than originally intended, or perhaps made by combining two or more other machines. Once a small amount of the plasma was placed in a tube and inserted in the machine, it was a simple matter of pushing a button and waiting until a number appeared in green LED on the readout panel. 

“Hmmm. Forty-three,” Granny said, seemingly to herself. “Interesting.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s simply a baseline. Now we wait. We’ll re-check in one hour. Would you like some more tea?”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“No, dear. I enjoy tea. I think I’ll have a cup. You’re welcome to explore down here if you like, or go sit with Brian. Whatever you’d like. I’ll be in the parlor.” The old woman smiled her ugly smile and turned, making her way slowly back up the stairs. 

Meg looked over the counter and on all of the shelves, into a metal cabinet against a wall, and in every drawer of a short storage unit next to the cabinet. There was an abundance of blood-drawing equipment: needles of various sizes, vials, alcohol wipes, rubber tourniquets, tubing, and collection bags like those used in blood banks. Meg shivered with disgust. But she also got an idea. Grateful that she was wearing a sweatshirt, she hastily zipped it halfway and stuffed some vials and other items inside. 

Brian paced the room, looking out the oddly thick windows and trying to think of a way out of this. His cell phone had no reception anywhere in the room, no matter what he tried. He heard the soft click of china in the parlor, but no voices. He knew Granny was in there, because he’d heard her heavy tread and the grunts of effort she made as she sat. He wondered what Meg was doing.  
The evil hag grinned horribly as Meg entered the parlor. “Have you decided to have some tea with me, Meg dear?”

“No, thank you, Granny,” Meg said, sitting on the overstuffed couch again. “But I did want to talk to you. To ask you to please reconsider. This is not right. Brian is young, and he’s a firefighter. He helps people, Granny. He’s a good man. And he has a family who loves him. Please don’t hurt him. Please.”

“That’s very sweet of you. It’s nice that he has such a good friend to care for him.”

“Will you please reconsider?”

“I’m afraid not, dearie. Scone?”

Meg sighed and fought the tears of fear and frustration that threatened. “No, thank you. I think I’d like to go sit with Brian. May I go into the room with him?”

“I’m sorry. But you can talk just fine through the bars.” Her creaky voice sounded as though she was speaking of nothing more than using regular plates rather than the good china. “Go see him. That’ll be nice for him.” Again the hideous smile.

Meg stood carefully, holding her arms close to her body, then left the parlor. She found Brian carefully examining the grate keeping him captive in the room. “Anything?”

“These bars are solid. Who the hell installs something like this?” He angrily shook the grate. 

“She may have done it herself. She’s got a full-on lab in the cellar. At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past her. Who _is_ she? _What_ is she?”

“No idea,” Brian shrugged, sitting on the floor on the other side of the grate from Meg had settled. 

She looked back toward the parlor and, seeing and hearing no sign of Granny, quickly unzipped her sweatshirt and shoved the blood draw supplies through the grate. “Quick, hide these somewhere, but somewhere close,” she whispered.

Brian took the supplies and tucked them behind the open door, where they were out of sight but handy.

“What are we gonna do?” He whispered.

Meg had kept one set of equipment, and positioned the items so that they were hidden unless the old woman stood right next to her. “Give me your arm. I need to draw another vial. I have a plan.”

Brian stuck his arm through the grate without hesitation, and Meg drew a vial of blood as quickly as she could, stuffing it into a pocket of her sweatshirt. 

“OK, get rid of this stuff,” she said, pushing the used items through the grate. Brian stuffed them behind a row of books in the nearby bookshelf. 

For the next hour, Brian and Meg sat on the floor together, quietly talking. Meg whispered her plan to him, and when Granny didn’t appear right away, they drew another vial of his blood before the hour was up. Brian hid the vial with the rest of their secret supplies behind the door. For the rest of the time, they tried to keep each other’s spirits up as best they could, making feeble jokes and talking about pleasant things. With a confidence they didn’t really feel, they made a date to go to the next Adler After Dark event at the planetarium. They didn’t even care what the program would be; they knew it was always their kind of event and they’d have fun no matter what, because they’d be together.

“And afterwards,” Meg said, squeezing Brian’s hand, “we can go to my apartment and have RumChata and make out.”

“I’d like that,” he replied, giving her the best smolder he could under the circumstances. “And maybe if I let you win at BattleGround Jupiter, I’ll get lucky with the ruler of Jupiter and all its moons.”

“I think that’s a distinct probability,” Meg told him, looking into his eyes. 

“That does it. We’re getting out of here.”

At exactly the one-hour mark, the crone shuffled into the hall, making a short trip into the other room to retrieve the little metal tray before bringing it, complete with fresh supplies, to Meg. She stood, saying nothing, as Meg drew another vial of blood from Brian. Again Meg kissed the bandage when she was done, feeling terrible about being any part of this horror. Brian gave her an encouraging grin and actually found the courage to wink. “It’s OK, sweetie.”

Meg smiled sadly and stood up. “Should I put this in that room?” She asked, holding up the little tray.

“Oh, thank you, dearie. That would be lovely.” 

Meg put the tray on a small dresser in the room that was covered with boxes of supplies, including a container for used needles, into which she dropped the needle. Then she re-entered the hall, blood vial in hand, to follow the hideous old woman back down into the cellar. Behind the hag, she pocketed the fresh blood and replaced it in her hand with one of the vials she’d secretly drawn earlier. 

“Forty-four?” The hag frowned grotesquely as the machine in the lab lit up with the result of this sample. “That’s not good.”

“It isn’t? What’s wrong?” 

“I was hoping the level would be at least sixty by now. At this rate… I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”

“Granny, this potion, is it dangerous? I mean, will it hurt Brian?”

“Oh, no dear. Of course, it’s all a bit academic, really, since I’ll have to sacrifice him in order to get the full transfusion. But the potion wouldn’t hurt him. Make him age a bit more slowly, be handsomer, I suppose. But it wouldn’t harm him. It’s unfortunate, really.”

“Yes. Unfortunate.” If Meg hadn’t known it would be useless, she would have whacked the miserable old witch with the biggest flask on the counter. 

It was full dark now. There were old-fashioned lamps with glass shades on many tables throughout the house but, even with them lit, the house was still gloomy and spooky. Brian and Meg continued to sit together on either side of the grate. Granny had said that the next blood draw was two hours from the last one, so Meg and Brian had time to draw another two secret vials of blood for Brian to hide in the room where he was being kept. 

Each vial was small, so the total amount of blood she’d drawn from Brian was much smaller than would be taken, for example, when a person donates a unit of blood, but Meg was concerned about the vile old woman seeing too many puncture marks on Brian’s arms. Fortunately, he was wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt. Since the hag allowed her to explore the laboratory all she wanted, Meg had drawn a vial of her own blood, no easy task, and tried it in the machine, thinking that might be a way to fool the crone into thinking her potion hadn’t worked. But the ugly old woman’s adjusting and fiddling with buttons and dials on the machine when she first showed it to Meg must have been to calibrate it somehow to Brian’s blood. When Meg put her own in it, the screen showed an error message. So much for that idea.

Three more times through the night, the hideous hag made Meg draw Brian’s blood, and Meg went through the same steps to substitute an earlier vial for the fresh one. The crone was becoming very concerned and agitated. 

“It’s not working as well as I’d hoped. The level just isn’t rising as I planned. This is very disappointing.”

“Maybe Brian’s just not a good… subject, or whatever. Maybe you should let us go and you can try again.”

“No, I won’t be able to do that,” she said in a wheezy tone of regret, but didn’t explain why. Meg didn’t bother to ask. It had been a longshot, anyway.

The hag tried to get Brian to lie on the daybed in his prison and sleep, and offered Meg a bedroom upstairs, but both refused. “We’re staying together,” Brian said with finality.

The old woman shrugged and went back down the hall, apparently to her own bed, reappearing at intervals for new blood samples. Meg and Brian leaned against one another, the grate between them, holding hands and giving each other what comfort they could through the seemingly endless night. Neither slept, although they may have dozed from time to time. 

The next morning, the horrible old woman made Meg draw another blood sample. Meg again switched the fresh one for an older vial. They could keep the ruse up indefinitely, because Meg would give Brian the fresh sample whenever she could return to him after testing. It would give them more time, but eventually the drug, whatever it was, would reach the blood level the evil hag wanted. Meg soon learned that wasn’t how it was going to go.

When Meg tested the morning’s sample, the crone scowled in frustration at the low result, but said, “Well, it can’t be helped. The time is up. It will have to be enough.”

“Wait, what? I thought you needed a certain blood level!”

“Yes, dear, I would have liked a much better result. But there is a window of effectiveness for the lebkuchen, you see, and it’s about to close. It’s time.”

“NO!” Meg cried, grabbing the woman’s arms. “Please! You can’t hurt Brian! I won’t let you!”

“I know, dearie, this is all terribly upsetting,” the old harridan creakily said, patting Meg with a gnarled hand. “Now. Let me show you how these straps work. Brian is a nice boy, but we can’t expect him to help with this part of the project, now, can we?”

Meg began to cry. “I won’t help you kill him. I won’t.”

“Of course not, Meg dear. You’ll just help me with the straps and then you can go.”

“No! I won’t! This is where it ends, you witch! You can’t do it without me, and I won’t help.”

“I would prefer not to do it without you, it’s true. And Brian would prefer that. I will if I must. That would be unfortunate, however.” Her thin, wavery voice actually sounded almost sad. 

“What do you mean, Brian would prefer it? He’d prefer not to die, lady.”

“Of course he would. But if he must, he’d prefer to do it gently, rather than taking a more difficult route.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Meg was crying and shrieking in her anguish. 

“I am very strong for my age, as you know. So I can help Brian down to the laboratory and onto the table, but you see, dearie, I can’t both keep him there and attach the straps if he’s fighting me.”

“Well, that sucks for you, but I’m sure the hell not going to help you murder him!”

“So if I must do it all myself, Brian will need to be unable to fight me.”

Suddenly, Meg understood the threat. “So you’re saying… you’ll kill him first and _then_ drain all his blood?”

“I’m afraid that’s my only alternative. Which would be much more difficult for him than to simply fall asleep during the transfusion.”

“Pass out from blood loss, you mean, and then die!”

“Yes, dear. Which is much nicer for him than the alternative.”

“Which is?”  
“Is it important? Just know that what I would have to do would be… unpleasant for him.”

In that moment, Meg knew what she must do. She couldn’t stop the tears that flowed down her cheeks, or the occasional sob of terror. But she tried to calm herself as best she could. “All right, tell me about the fucking straps, you evil bitch!”

Meg struggled and fumbled with the many straps on the exam table. Try as she might, she kept repeating that she could not figure out how to work them. 

“Well, it doesn’t work the same when there’s nothing inside! These work with pressure. I can’t…” She purposely inserted the end of the strap incorrectly into the buckle again. 

It took quite a while, but eventually Meg was able to wear through the terrible old hag’s infuriating, oily patience. The old crone began to be short with Meg, showing her for what seemed like the hundredth time how to fasten the straps. Meg continued to do it wrong, and to express confusion about how they worked. 

_This was not in the plan. First the potion didn’t work as it should have, which meant that the result was not going to be what she’d hoped and she would probably have to concoct the potion all over again, and then find a new boy and girl to help her. It was all very vexing. And now this girl was proving completely useless at fastening the restraints._

“I can’t understand it – I can’t do it – without something inside!” Meg wailed. “It just doesn’t make sense to me! I don’t see how the limb would go in…”

Finally, the terrible old harridan reached her limit with Meg’s incompetence. Her wheezy, creaky voice rose to a thin howl as she snapped, “Oh, you stupid, stupid girl! Here! I will lie on the table and I will tell you how to do each step as you go. Now, help me up.”

Meg, still crying, did the best she could to assist the very large woman to awkwardly, with much grunting and groaning, climb onto the exam table and lie down. Then, the ugly witch talked Meg through fastening each restraint, one by one. She was happy to see that the ridiculous girl was finally catching on. With careful instruction, strap by strap, she was at last seeing Meg begin to understand as she worked the buckles. With a sigh, the horrible old woman talked Meg through the last restraint. 

And realized, too late, that she’d been tricked. 

Meg tore the chain from around the crone’s neck, palmed the key, and ran up the stairs, having no idea whether the old woman would remain strapped down. She threw the cellar door closed, having seen earlier that it was made of thick, shiny metal, with a wide bolt on the outside. Meg assumed it was meant to imprison the witch’s victims in the cellar when necessary. She hoped it would imprison the witch, at least long enough for her and Brian to escape.

She slammed the bolt home and rushed through the dim rooms of the house to the hallway, and used the key to unlock the grate, freeing Brian. 

“I hope the key opens the front doors,” Brian cried as they ran pell-mell down the hall, through the parlor, and to the door.

They key worked. Brian and Meg ran as fast as they could to his car, locking the doors as soon as they were inside. As Brian sped down the driveway, Meg looked back at the house to see the hideous old woman emerge through the front doors, shaking a fist in the air and screaming in rage. 

Fear and desperation drove them to try everything they could to find their way out of the neighborhood. They didn’t know whether, at any moment, the horrible woman would come careening around a corner in the vintage Batmobile to recapture them. 

“I’m trying Siri,” Meg announced, taking Brian’s phone from the dash. “Maybe we’ll catch a break.” 

They did. For whatever reason, Siri guided them, straight and true, out of the lush neighborhood of estates and mansions and back to the real world. Their first stop was District 21 headquarters, where they reported what happened to a room full of wildly skeptical detectives. Sergeant Voight laughed out loud. The detectives looked their disbelief at one another. But Sergeant Platt, who had escorted them up to the bullpen and then stayed to hear the incredible story, wasn’t so sure.

“Hank, I don’t think they’re making it up.”

“We’re not!” Brian cried, holding up his phone with the Craigslist ad on the screen. “I showed you the texts. You see the needle marks.”

“All right, all right,” Voight said, holding up a hand. “We’ll check it out.”

“Don’t go alone. Take the whole team. And big guns. This woman… she’s unbelievably strong, and she’s… there’s… I wonder if bullets will even work on her,” Meg said, addressing this last comment to Brian.

“Come on, Otis, that’s-“ 

Brian cut Adam Ruzek off. “You weren’t there. You’ll believe us when you see her.”

Having filled out at least a hundred forms and given formal statements, Brian and Meg headed home. The witch was the Intelligence Unit’s problem now. They were both exhausted. When they reached Brian’s car, they decided to prioritize the plan they’d made when they were imprisoned in the witch’s creepy house. Although they hadn’t yet gone on their planetarium date, they would go to Meg’s apartment, have RumChata and make out.

Brian had offered to let Meg win at BattleGround Jupiter, but she was having none of it. “We’ll play for real. And this time, we’ll up the stakes even more than last time.”

“What’s better than kissing the ruler of Jupiter and all its moons?” Brian raised an eyebrow, with a very intrigued grin.

“I’m glad you asked, young Paduan,” Meg laughed. “Getting lucky. Getting lucky with the ruler of Jupiter and all its moons.”


	5. The House Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian "Otis" Zvonecek and his new girlfriend go to check out some memorabilia from their favorite old science fiction show, and end up at a creepy house where a hideous old woman lures them inside with promises of all kinds of cool memorabilia. But the woman isn't what she seems...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Halloween and I thought it would be fun to put Otis and Meg in another fairy tale. Bonus points if you can figure out which one it is!

“You’re sure this is a good idea? I don’t know this part of town at all,” Meg said, looking out the windows of Brian’s car at a neighborhood that was far from hers, both in distance and in character.

Meg lived in a blue-collar, working-class neighborhood. Brian’s apartment was in a much nicer part of Chicago, which is why it took all three of them – Brian, Joe Cruz, and Sylvie Brett – to afford the rent. But this neighborhood was something entirely different. This neighborhood… it was weird to even call it that because the lots surrounding the mansions were so huge, it seemed that even people who lived in houses on adjacent lots lived too far apart to qualify as “neighbors.” 

“We’re good. Just trust Siri,” Brian said, giving Meg a little smile. Not the big, incendiary one that turned him instantly from cute guy to hottie, but one that gave Meg a little rush nonetheless. 

“I don’t know. I don’t belong here. I keep thinking any minute we’re going to be pulled over for Driving While Poor.”

“I’m with you there,” he agreed. “And then we’d be escorted to the border and told not to come back.”

Meg laughed. “I hope you aren’t as turned around as I am, or else we’re gonna need that escort. I’m so lost right now, I could never find my way out of here.”

“That’s why there’s Siri.” 

Unfortunately, Siri let them down. She was not able to help Brian and Meg find the house they wanted. She said she could; at one point, she announced – very pleased with herself, Brian thought – that they had reached their destination. But they were at the bottom of a dead-end street that had no houses on it.

Brian gave Siri a piece of his mind. Meg had to laugh when they began to drive away from the spot and Siri said, “Recalculating…” 

“Recalculate _this_, Siri!!!” 

This was all a little out of Meg’s comfort zone, but she totally understood Brian’s desire to go to this effort. The guy had advertised an authentic Admiral Grus jersey actually worn by Barry Lueck in the original series of Battle Astronauts. The Craigslist ad said he had documentation of its authenticity, which Brian insisted upon after the Battlestar Galactica helmet incident. So she totally understood his disappointment. 

“Maybe we could drive around, see if we can find the street name. It’ll still be light outside for a little while.” Meg would actually rather give up and cuddle up on a couch to watch an episode of Battle Astronauts, maybe order a pizza. But the jersey had actually been worn by Barry Lueck on the show, so she was willing to stick it out as long as Brian was. 

They ended up driving around the winding, seemingly shifting streets of this exclusive neighborhood for two hours. It was no good. They couldn’t even find the street. By the time it was full dark, Brian was crushed and asking, once again, what kind of Craigslist poster doesn’t answer calls and texts about their advertised item. But he was grateful to Meg for her patience, and for coming with her at all. 

“You’ve been great about this, Meg. So you get to decide what we do tonight. I’m up for whatever you want to do.” 

They’d had some fun dates. The more time they spent together, the more they found they had in common, and the more they liked each other. They had a few friends in common that they could double- and triple-date with. They’d also had a few chances to spend some more time alone together, which was something that was on both their minds as they contemplated how to spend their Saturday night. Both Brian and Meg were on the hesitant, awkward side with the opposite sex to begin with. And, although they’d never discussed it explicitly, they also shared a reluctance to rush into sex. 

As new couples do, they had gone a bit further each time they were alone together. After midnight black-light bowling with Cruz and his girlfriend Chloe, which had probably been Meg’s favorite of their dates so far, she had invited Brian up to her apartment for a BattleGround Jupiter rematch. They’d both ended up shirtless on her couch, and there had been some over-the-jeans petting. After Brian’s favorite date, laser tag, they had done a lot of shirtless grinding. And after their latest date, an alcohol-fueled and hotly-contested game of Catan with three other couples at Brian’s apartment, they’d ended up in Brian’s bed. They’d undone each other’s jeans and done some very pleasant exploration, but didn’t get completely naked. 

So when Meg said that she wanted to watch Battle Astronauts and order pizza, Brian suggested they do it at his place. He said it was because his TV was bigger, but in fact it was because that’s where his condoms were. Just in case. 

The original Battle Astronauts had not aged well in some ways, but for the most part, the plots and characters held up very well. Besides, it was just a fun show to watch and, given that Brian and Meg had seen every episode at least three times, they didn’t have to pay much attention. They enjoyed pizza and the show, cuddled together under a blanket on the couch in the living room. They laughed and joked, made fun of cheesy parts of the show, and kissed. 

During the third episode, the kisses became more insistent. It was a short time before they had each other’s shirts off. With Meg’s legs wrapped around his waist, Brian was helpless to stop himself from rubbing against her, especially with her encouraging him, until they were both gasping. But when she reached her hand between them and began fumbling with the button on his jeans, it was time to go upstairs before either of his roommates unexpectedly came home and got an eyeful. This time, although they saved the final act for later, they did get completely naked, and they both slept in Brian’s bed after satisfying each other for the first time. Well, times. 

The following morning, as they were hungrily eating waffles and bacon, Brian’s phone pinged with the sound of an incoming text. 

“Finally!” He cried, seeing that the text was from Gruseliger Forscher, the person selling the Admiral Grus jersey. Brian wasn’t sure whether Gruseliger was a man’s name or a woman’s, but assumed it was a man. Forscher said that he had received Brian’s messages, although he said nothing about all the frantic calls. This time, he texted directions to the house, mentioning for the first time that GPS didn’t really work in his neighborhood because the streets hadn’t been correctly mapped. Brian had a lot of opinions about Forscher not mentioning that before, but now that he had actual directions, and after his amazing night with Meg, he was again full of hope and ready to try again.

Again Brian and Meg set out in search of the house. The neighborhood, when they finally got there, was just as overwhelming and intimidating as before, although it made them feel a little better to have directions. Except that there were an awful lot of one-way streets in the area. Brian didn’t say anything, but he became less confident of his ability to find his way back out with every turn. He’d expected to simply reverse Forscher’s directions, but that wasn’t going to work. He was going to have to ask Forscher for directions back out of this labyrinth of mansions and gated compounds. He wouldn’t use the word ‘lost’, at least not to Meg. At least not yet. 

The directions weren’t that great, either. They did a fair amount of wandering, looking for street names, because there simply wasn’t much about the actual landscape that matched the directions. Meg was just beginning to think that the jersey, even if authentic and even if it still had traces of Barry Lueck’s actual DNA in it, might not be worth this kind of time and aggravation. She knew Brian would be disappointed if he didn’t get the jersey, but they’d been driving around for almost two hours. Again. 

Brian spotted the street first. It was Copper Drive Southeast, and they wanted Southwest, but he thought that they might, finally, be getting close. He turned the corner in hopes Copper Drive Southeast would just, at some point, _become_ Copper Drive Southwest. Meg wasn’t sure it worked that way, but she was noticing the gas gauge, and hoping for some luck. It was starting to seem like a long time since they’d eaten those waffles. Besides which, both she and Brian were getting a little bit testy with each other – taking their boredom, anxiety, and emerging hunger out on the only available target. 

And then, as if by enchantment, the street became Copper Drive Southwest. Brian let out a whoop of victory and Meg leaned over and kissed him while he drove. Both began to look eagerly for house numbers. They turned out to be hard to find. Some houses simply didn’t have any visible numbers. There were tall hedges interrupted by stone pillars supporting locked gates, or actual carriage houses flanking electronically-controlled barriers, or carefully-cultivated landscaping that split to admit a driveway, but concealed the houses at the end of the drive. They began to fall back into a tense, unhappy silence as more and more time elapsed without them seeming to get any closer to their destination. Without saying so, Brian was becoming truly concerned about the amount of gas he had left. He would never have believed it would take this much driving to find the house, and they were certainly not going to come upon a Chevron in this neighborhood. 

The street made another wide, curvy turn, and they could see, perhaps a quarter-mile ahead, that Copper Drive Southwest came to a dead end. 

“No!” Brian gasped. 

“Don’t give up,” Meg said. “There’s still one house on the right.” 

Brian slowed the car. As he pulled up, he could see that there was no house number on the river rock plinths that supported large, wrought iron lamps on either side of a curved driveway. There was a gate, but it was open. A good sign. Brian stopped and he and Meg squinted up at the house, which was surprisingly overgrown with trees in need of trimming and some kind of dark, clinging ivy. Still, Meg thought she could see a house number on the small porch roof that overhung the double doors at the front. 

“This might be it,” she said. “That looks like the right numbers. We’ll be sure when we pull in.” 

“I don’t know. That house… Don’t you think it’s a little creepy?”

Brian was right. The house was tall and square, apparently three stories, with a mansard roof that featured two dormer windows on each side. It had been an indiscriminate beige color, but was badly in need of paint, with moss growing on the water-stained roof. The fence around it and the railings on the flat areas of the roof featured wickedly pointed uprights that, while intended to be decorative, gave the house a distinctly menacing air. The lawn in front was short, but dry and full of bare, brown patches. In the fading light of late afternoon, it was not a welcoming place.

Until Brian saw the Batmobile.

Parked just past the front of the house, where it hadn’t been readily visible from the street, was a low, sleek, black car with red trim and the classic rounded, dual-sided windshield and top from the original Batman television series. It even had the red bat logos on the door and hubcaps. Meg, who had removed her seat belt to lean forward to see the house number, bumped her head on the windshield as Brian slammed on the brakes. 

“Do you see that? That’s a Batmobile! There’s a real, original Batmobile in there!”

He quickly backed up and turned the car into the driveway, leaving Meg to hold on as best she could. When they reached the front of the house, they could see that it was, in fact, the right house number. They didn’t discuss it, simply got out and went immediately over to the Batmobile before knocking on the door.

“That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, it could be a reproduction, but who cares? It’s awesome!” Brian cried.

Meg noted the three chrome exhaust pipes angling up from the sides, and the grate-covered flashing light on top. “This is amazing – it’s got everything from the original show!” 

For long minutes, they walked around, ooh-ing and aah-ing over the details of the Batmobile, forgetting anything but its long, aerodynamic lines and the memories evoked by the car. “I wonder if blue flame comes out of here,” Meg asked, pointing to the round exhaust port in the rear.

“It looks brand new, I bet it runs!” Brian exclaimed.

“Of course it does,” a creaky voice said.

Brian and Meg turned to see an elderly woman leaning on a walking stick, standing on the driveway about halfway between the door and the Batmobile. She was hideous. There was no other word for her. She was very tall and stooped, wearing a long, baggy dress of faded green over her overabundant form, with a brown sweater that was more hole than yarn hanging limply over her shoulders. Her feet were encased in what appeared to be house slippers that had absolutely no shape anymore. Her long, grey hair sprouted sparsely from a greyish-pink scalp and a faded scarf of no particular color was tied loosely and carelessly around her head. Her face was careworn and hung with sagging folds of skin which did nothing to distract from her massive, misshapen nose. Meg thought that her teeth probably gave her a lot of pain and bad breath, because what few there were of them were brown and chipped. 

This old hag was the last person on Earth Brian would have expected to own a Batmobile, yet she hobbled over to them and patted one of the long fins affectionately. Meg was again concerned about the woman’s health as she noticed the painfully gnarled and bent fingers of a long-term arthritis sufferer. “This baby purrs like a kitten, and yes, it shoots blue flame out the back.” She smiled hideously at Meg.

Meg smiled back, going into nurse mode. She dealt with all manner of people in her job in the ER at Chicago Med, and could easily turn off conventionality and judgment to deal with people on their own terms, after doing it for years. “Hello. I’m Meg, and this is Brian.”

“I’m Gruseliger Forscher,” the old woman said, nodding but making no move to shake hands. Meg wasn’t surprised; it would probably hurt to have someone squeeze those fingers even lightly.

Brian came over to stand several steps away from the woman. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Forscher.” He, too, was good at talking to people who were different from him.

“No one calls me Mrs. Forscher. I’m Granny.”

Meg laughed a little, and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Granny.”

“Are you the one selling the Admiral Grus jersey?” Brian asked.

“Oh, yes, that’s me,” the woman said in her wheezy, creaky voice. “Would you like to come in and see it?”

Brian and Meg both had the urge to share a look, but out of politeness tried not to. This place, and this woman, were creepy. They really didn’t want to go into the house.

“I have all kinds of memorabilia,” Granny said. “This is just the beginning. I have a helmet from the 1962 version of General Craddock From Mars. Not the crappy remake, the original movie, you know.”

“Seriously? Cool,” Meg said.

“And then, of course, there’s my Team Neptune stuff.”

“Wait – Team Neptune? You have Team Neptune stuff?” Brian’s eyes went wide and he took a step toward Granny. Team Neptune had been his absolute favorite show as a little kid, and he still had a special place for it in his heart.

“Oh, yes. Collected that for years. Come on in, I’ll show you.” 

Without even thinking about it, Brian and Meg followed Granny up the driveway and into the dark, creepy house. Everything inside was strangely clean, but seemed to be from another era. The furniture was shiny with polish, but heavy and dark, and the windows were swathed in thick, dark fabrics that kept out the scant sunlight that could penetrate the overgrown trees outside. The air was dense and stale, as though no door or window had been opened for ages, and there was a slight chemical tang to it. They didn’t see any thing resembling science fiction memorabilia anywhere as they followed the woman, now taking the chance to share a puzzled but amused look between them. This was definitely an odd place, and an odd woman. 

She waved them into a parlor with more of the heavy, polished furniture, inviting them to have a seat on an overstuffed sofa with a tall, rounded back, covered in dark plum-colored velvet.

“Please, have a seat. I’ve made us some tea.”

After taking a seat on a wingback chair across from them, she lifted an ornate silver teapot and began to pour into the three cups waiting on a matching silver tray. The table was more shiny wood, with complicated, curlicued legs. It looked like it weighed too much for Meg to be able to move it. Now Meg and Brian openly looked at one another, dawning concern on each of their faces. 

“Mrs. Forscher-“

“Oh, call me Granny,” she said, smiling hideously with her few remaining teeth. 

“Granny,” Brian continued, “I’m afraid we don’t have time for tea. We’ve come quite a ways and we’ve been driving around… It’s kind of you to offer, but we can’t really stay for tea.”

Granny finished pouring out and picked up a teacup and saucer. She indicated that Meg and Brian should do the same. “Oh, I insist. I’m an old woman, I don’t get much company. And maybe you’d like me to tell you some stories about being on the set of Team Neptune.”

“You were on the set of Team Neptune?” Meg was intrigued and picked up a teacup without thinking further about it. 

“Oh, yes. I was what they called a script girl in those days…” 

For the next fifteen minutes, they sat rapt as Granny told them stories about the set of Team Neptune, and the antics of some of the actors. Brian thought the tea was terrible, but Granny kept watching him and looking at his cup. He would have simply stopped drinking it, but she was so persistently observant that he felt he had to finish the cup. Somehow he managed it, but it wasn’t easy. At least Granny’s stories were interesting. The second he set his empty cup down, Granny ended the story she was telling and struggled to her feet, grunting. Brian noticed that Meg’s cup was still half-full. He decided to complain later about Granny paying attention to his cup and not hers.

“Let’s go see the jersey,” Granny croaked, and led them to a doorway, then down a narrow hall with a thick, sound-deadening rug on the floor. At the end of the hall was a tall wooden door that was as shiny as the rest of the wood in her house. The door opened, not with the creak Brian was expecting, but with an almost pneumatic-sounding swish. 

Granny stepped aside and waved them inside. There, on a mannequin bust, was Admiral Grus’s jersey. Brian exclaimed and rushed toward it. As he did, the woman moved much faster than they had seen her move before, and certainly much faster than they would have expected she could. She pushed Meg back through the doorway and slammed the door, closing Brian inside the room.

“What the hell?” Meg gasped, slammed against a wall of the narrow hallway by the old woman’s quick push. 

“Don’t worry, dearie. I’m not planning to hurt you. I just need your help with a little project I’m working on.”

“Wait – open that door! Let Brian out!”

“Brian is fine. I need his help, too.” The woman pulled a small, tarnished brass key on a chain from under her shapeless dress and fitted it into the doorknob of the room where Brian was pounding on the door to be let out. As she turned the key, a thin, unseen panel on the side of the door opened and the woman slid a metal grate, made up of vertical bars about six inches apart and three thick horizontal bars at regular intervals, over the doorway to click into a frame on the other side of the doorway. Then she turned the key again and pushed the door to the room back open, tucking the key back under her dress.  
Brian pushed the door roughly back to the wall and began to step out, seeing the grate only in time to avoid knocking into it.

“Hey!” He cried. “What’s going on? Let me out of here!” 

“You’ll be fine,” Granny sighed, turning to open a door further back up the hall toward the parlor. She went in, leaving the door open behind her.

Brian and Meg looked at each other, astounded and now deeply concerned. “Call 911,” Meg said quietly. She didn’t have her cell phone with her, but Brian did.

He stepped back into the room, moving down the wall a bit in hopes the woman wouldn’t hear him calling but, at that moment, she came out of the room she’d gone into. “Oh, you won’t have any service in here,” she said, apparently fully aware of what Brian was doing although she couldn’t see him.

It was then that Meg saw that the woman held a little metal tray like those at a doctor’s office or hospital, upon which sat modern blood-drawing equipment, the same kind Meg used daily at Chicago Med.  
“What the hell is that for?” Meg knew she was shrieking, but she was past trying to be polite or calm at this point. They needed to get out of this house and away from this creepy old hag.

“It’s for you, my dear. To draw his blood.”

“WHAT? I’m not going to do- And how did you know I can draw blood? Who are you?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Let’s just get the first sample, shall we? So we can see what we’re working with.”

Brian grabbed and shook the grate over the door. “Let me out of here! This is illegal! Let me out right now!”

Meg moved toward the old woman. “Listen, lady, I don’t want to hurt you, but if you think I’m going to let you hurt either one of us, think again. Let him out. Now.” She tried to sound scary, but the truth was, she was scared. 

The old woman simply stood placidly, holding the tray of blood drawing equipment. “You may try to leave, if you like. You won’t succeed. Go ahead, try.”

Meg ran down the hallway, through the parlor, to the door. For at least five minutes, she tried to open it without success. Giving up at last, she turned to see that the old woman was not behind her. She was afraid of what the woman might be doing to Brian, but there was no sound from the back of the house. Meg decided enough was enough. She picked up a straight-backed chair and swung it, legs first, into the closest window. It bounced off. _What the hell?_ She tried again, two, three, four more times, each swing harder than the last. There wasn’t even a mark on the window. Meg knocked on it with her knuckle, and found that it was some sort of thick material that felt almost plastic. Beginning to panic, Meg ran from window to window, knocking on all of them. They were all made of that unbreakable material. 

Shouting a vile string of words, she ran back through the parlor to the hallway. “Let us the fuck out of here, damn it! If I have to knock you down and take that key, then that’s what I’ll do. I am not messing around here.”

She glanced at Brian, who looked as frightened as she felt.

“I understand, my dear. This is very upsetting,” the hag wheezed, a horrible smile showing her disgusting teeth. “Do what you must.”

The woman just stood there, still holding the tray. Meg hesitated briefly, looked at Brian behind that grate, and lunged. The woman didn’t budge, but simply held an arm out to keep Meg from being able to grab at the chain around her neck where the key hung. It was as if she was made of solid rock. Nothing Meg could do made her move, or seemed to change her expression, even when Meg became desperate and began to kick at her. 

“I’m not taking Brian’s blood, you witch! What the hell do you even want it for? Just let us out of here. I’ll use a weapon if I have to. We are not staying here one more minute.”

Again, the old woman said, “I understand, my dear. Do what you must.” 

Meg retrieved the chair she’d used to try to break a window and brandished it at the woman. The woman didn’t move, and didn’t change expression. Meg looked to Brian.

“Do it,” he said.

Meg swung the chair with all her strength, straight at the center of the woman’s body, hitting her on her left arm and chest. She didn’t move or react. The only result was gouges in the thick, heavy legs of the chair and some very sore muscles in Meg’s arms. Now she was truly frightened. 

“What the hell?” Brian gasped, his wide eyes and gaping mouth mirroring Meg’s. 

Meg set the chair down slowly, unsure what to do. Despite Meg’s attempt to bodily remove the key from around the woman’s neck, and hitting her with a substantial chair, the hag hadn’t even dropped the little tray with the blood drawing equipment. For a long time, no one said anything. The look between Brian and Meg was full of fear and questions with no obvious answers.

“I won’t hurt Brian,” Meg said quietly.

“Of course not, dearie. You’re just going to draw a little blood.”

“Yours, maybe. Not his.” Meg hissed, trying to act braver than she felt.

“There are knives in the kitchen. You may try to spill my blood, if you must.”

The looks between Brian and Meg had graduated to terrified and unbelieving. Without a word, they decided that it would be useless, and possibly dangerous to Meg, for her to try to hurt the woman. They would have to find another way to free Brian and escape the house.


	6. The Alarm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian (Otis) Zvonecek and his girlfriend, OC Meg Armstrong, are getting serious. They haven't used the "L" word yet, but they're both thinking it. And then something terrible happens.

Almost from the moment they met, Brian and Meg knew that there was something special between them. Now, after dating for several months, neither had any doubts. Their relationship was serious. They’d taken their time with sex, and it had been worth the wait. But more than that, they understood each other. They got each other’s jokes, and liked a lot of the same things. Each instinctively knew what the other needed when they’d had a tough shift at work which, given their jobs, could mean anything from sheer physical or emotional exhaustion to psychological distress from the kinds of things they saw in their work.  


Sometimes they just needed to laugh, to be distracted. Other times, they needed to pound out their frustrations with exercise or let off steam with a heated battle in one of their games. Comforting each other could mean just providing an opportunity to talk it out, or soothing each other with hugs and kisses. At times, solace took the form of sex, which could be either soft and slow, or hard and frenzied, depending on what they needed. The point was, they’d found in each other a source of strength and calm that allowed them to heal and recharge so that they could go back out and do it again the next day.  


Depending on his mood, Brian could be so romantic and emotional in bed that Meg got tears in her eyes. He could also be playful and fun, which was absurdly sexy, too. Brian seldom called Meg anything but _“Pupsic”_, which is Russian for “baby” and made Meg’s knees weak every time he used it. Meg had never felt for anyone what she felt for Brian.  


Even several months in, Brian had trouble going very long without making himself crazy thinking about Meg and how it felt to be with her, and the things she did and said when they were in bed together. As important as that was to him, though, he knew it wasn’t the best part. The best part was the man he was when he was with her. He worked harder, took better care of himself, made better choices, all because he wanted to be worthy of the way she looked at him, the way she felt about him.  


They were both seeing forever when they looked at each other. But aside from their feelings, their relationship was usually the opposite of serious. They loved to make each other laugh, and just found each other entertaining in general, no matter what they were doing.  
  
Meg’s family adored Brian, although most of Brian’s family was reserving judgment on Meg. His Baba liked her as soon as Meg tried out the polite Russian phrases Brian had taught her, but his parents thought that Brian was the best and brightest, and had very definite ideas about the woman who could be good enough for their son. A slightly dweeby nurse wasn’t necessarily what they had in mind.  


Brian didn’t care what his parents thought, for two reasons. First, Baba was teaching Meg Russian. She’d never done that before with any girl he’d ever brought home. Which meant his parents would, in the end, be overruled. And second, Brian was in love. He hadn’t quite found the courage to tell Meg that yet, but he’d begun to float tiny suggestions about moving in together to see how she would react. They’d figured out how to make their work schedules mesh so that they had more time together, and Brian thought he might be the happiest he’d ever been in his life.  


This morning, which promised a lovely spring day, was the beginning of a three-day shift for Brian, which meant a bit of reluctance to part as they kissed good-bye to go their separate ways. They stood next to Brian’s car, hugging and nuzzling before he drove to the firehouse and she took the El to the hospital.  


“Have a great day, _Milyi_,” Meg whispered as she stole one more kiss.  


“You, too, _Nienaglyadnaya_.”  


Meg laughed and kissed Brian’s cheek. “Show off.”  


She disentangled herself from him, taking a couple steps backward to grin at him before turning around to cross the street.  


“Call me when you get a chance,” Brian called after her, smiling from ear to ear.  


“I will. Be safe.” She waved while he unlocked the door of his car, whistling.  


They exchanged a few texts that day, as always. Brian sent a picture of Mouch and Tuesday asleep together in front of the TV, with the news that Tuesday had learned absolutely nothing at obedience school again that week. He also said he was taking major flak for the asiago chicken pasta he’d made for lunch, which he’d feel bad about, except that there wasn’t a morsel left. Meg, in turn, sent a picture of Maggie pretending to catch Will in a compromising position with a CPR dummy. Brian and Meg had a friendly competition going, each trying to outdo the other in sending the goofiest pictures, and their coworkers had gotten involved so that it was evolving into a photo war: Firehouse 51 vs. Chicago Med ER. The best one so far had been of a line of firefighters, including Chief Boden, taken from outside the Chief’s office with all of their faces smashed up against the glass from the inside. No one had any idea how Brian had convinced Chief Boden to participate, including Chief Boden.  


Brian was deep in a comic book when his cell phone played a snippet of the Princess Theme from Battleground Jupiter, which made him smile before he really even thought about it. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, blushing while all the firefighters and paramedics in the common room teased him.  


“_Privyat, Vozluyblennaya_,” he said quietly as he scooted out toward the bunk room.  


“You’re killin’ me with that,” Meg purred, smiling into her phone.  


“You’re such a sucker! It doesn’t even matter what I say, as long as it’s in Russian. Last night? That was the words to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.”  


“It still worked for me.”  


“I noticed.” Brian’s low, soft laugh made Meg squirm.  


Meg giggled. “I just wanted to call and say good night. I used to like my bed, but it’s lonely in here without you now.”  


“Count yourself lucky, _Pupsik_. Cruz made burritos. Lonely beats the hell out of a house full of guys who had refried beans for dinner.”  


“Oh. My.”  


“Tell me about it.”  


They were able to laugh together for about two seconds before Meg could hear the klaxon go off in the firehouse.  


“Gotta go. Sweet dreams.”  


“Be safe, talk to you tomorrow.”  


Meg smiled as she pushed the “end” button and burrowed between her covers. She had been amazed at how warm Brian always felt – too hot, sometimes – but she was so used to snuggling up to his warmth that now, when he was on shift, her bed felt cold. She said a quick prayer for his safety and was half asleep before she finished.  


She was awakened by the sound of screaming. When she opened her eyes, everything Meg could see was on fire.  


Meg was instantly completely awake, which was not a good thing. Rather than breathing shallowly in sleep, she sucked in her breath in shock, inhaling a deep lungful of thick, soot-filled smoke. Her throat spasmed and she began to cough. The good news was that she knew where everything in her apartment was, even in the dark, so she thought she could navigate to the front door. The bad news was that between her and the front door was a wall of flame.  


Her entire respiratory system clamped down, refusing to take in any more of the hot, acrid smoke that saturated the air. She was terrified, but after the fire safety courses nurses were required to take annually, Meg instinctively tried to get as low as possible, where there was less smoke. She threw herself off the bed and onto the floor, coughing and wheezing as she prepared to crawl to safety, wherever that was.  


_The windows_, she thought. The one in her bedroom was a sheer three-story drop from her top-floor apartment to a concrete driveway, but maybe the bathroom? She coughed convulsively, blinded by tears now rolling out of her stinging eyes, and began to slither her way across the floor on her belly. That was no good. Her dresser, which was against the burning wall, was a mass of flame that cut her off from the bedroom door. She tried to think, but the heat, the desperate coughing and gasping for air, the burning pain in her eyes, and the deafening roar of the fire blasted at her so fiercely that she could only stare, stunned, at the impenetrable barrier of fire between her and safety. She whimpered and backed up the way she’d come.  


She wondered if she could tie sheets together into a rope and climb out the window. At least she could get closer to the ground, so her fall wouldn’t be so long. She reached up and pulled at the bedsheets, but found that the far corner of the top sheet was already on fire. She recoiled and left the sheets where they were. Meg had no idea how to make a rope out of bedsheets, anway, and it was getting so hard to inhale, and the constant, helpless coughing hurt so much that she really had all she could do just to keep breathing. She could see nothing except the frenzied onslaught of the flames, now consuming her bed, forcing her ever further into the corner.

Already, she saw, the flames were between her and the window. _No!_ She was now pinned in the corner, surrounded by fire. _How was she going to get out?_  


Meg’s mind suddenly grasped that she was probably going to die. It was hard to focus on even such a horrifying thought, competing as it was with the overwhelming sensations of terror of the ravenous fire consuming everything with a speed she would not have believed possible, and her frantic desperation to see anything but the furious glow through eyes tortured by the smoke. She felt her feet hit the wall as she pushed herself backward along the floor. For a second, just a second, she put her head down and tried to take a breath of clean air. But there was none. She tried again, thinking to breathe more deeply this time, but her irritated lungs refused to open. She tried to focus her mind, but she was so starved for oxygen that she could only think how black everything was starting to go. She was surprised to find that she was glad. The fierce light of the fire hurt her smoke-irritated eyes. The dark was better. And the roar was fading away, too. Good.

Brian jumped from the truck before it had even stopped moving. Everyone on the truck had known he would, and Mouch jumped right after him, reached out, and caught the collar of his turnout coat.  


“I know, Otis, but we’re doin’ this right. Wait for orders. We’ll get her out safe.”  


Brian thought of nothing but getting to Meg. He struggled against Mouch, but before he could make any headway, the rest of Truck 81 was out and beginning to gather equipment.  


“Otis, I’m not gonna be able to stop you, so you and Mouch get your gear on and take the top floor. But you do not go in until Mouch has checked your gear, is that clear?” Casey said, hands on either of Brian’s shoulders and face right up in his grill.  


“Got it, Captain,” Brian shouted and grabbed the breathing apparatus Mouch was already holding out to him. They suited up, checked each other’s gear, and headed into the building at a dead run.  


Chief Boden rounded the truck at that moment, seeing their backs as they disappeared through the front door.  
“That a good idea?” He asked Casey.  


“We need everyone we got. I can’t spare anyone to hold him back, and that’s what it would’ve taken.”  


“Yeah,” Boden grunted, turning toward the building, smoke pouring from every window, with flames visible in many. “This is a pure rescue. We’re gonna lose the building.”  


“I know. Lemme get the rest of the crew searching.”  


It took an eternity for Brian and Mouch to make their way up all three flights of stairs to Meg’s floor, partly because of all the equipment they were wearing, and partly because much of the railing and parts of the stairs themselves were burning. While Mouch went to the apartment next door, Brian wasted no time breaking down the door to Meg’s apartment, noting with horror that the flames were already beginning to diminish as they ran out of readily-available fuel and concentrated on devouring the building itself. He could see almost nothing through the smoke, but he knew exactly where Meg’s bedroom was.  


“Meg! Meg, call out! Meg, _Pupsic_, where are you?”  


It was a tiny apartment. There were not many places she could be. Brian almost screamed when he saw that the bed was fully engulfed in flames, but at the same moment, just beyond the fire that was rapidly consuming the carpet, he saw a small, dark shape on the floor. Limbs curled defensively around herself, Meg was lying in the corner at the foot of her bed. Brian half shouted, half wailed her name, ignoring the flames as he stepped through them to her. His turnout gear would protect him, he knew, long enough to get to her before the fire did.  


He lifted Meg from the floor, cradling her as tightly as he could so that he could protect her head with his gloved hands. As he did, she let out a soft, strangled cry, at which Brian simultaneously sobbed and swore vehemently, relieved beyond anything he would have imagined to find that she was alive. He squeezed her even tighter as he stepped backward through the flames again. When he’d gotten through, he turned and ran to the hall, calling for Mouch.  


“Mouch! I got her! She’s alive! You find anyone?”  


“No,” Mouch shouted above the sound of the fire and the building beginning to lose its structural integrity. “They musta got out. We gotta go!”  


As Brian led Mouch down the stairs, Mouch radioed to the rest of the team that they were bringing out a victim, unconscious but alive.  


The team did what they could, but the building was so old and so fully involved that the best they could do was to control the fire so that it didn’t spread. All of the residents had gotten out or been rescued, but there were two people already on their way to Med - one with severe burns.  


Brian emerged from the building, cradling Meg protectively in his arms, and carried her to Ambulance 61, where he laid her gently, lovingly on the waiting gurney. After that, all he could do was watch helplessly as Sylvie Brett and Emily Foster worked feverishly to assess Meg’s condition, then embarked on a frantic burst of activity to stabilize her enough to transport.  


He was so desperate to help her that he would have gotten in the way, but the whole firehouse knew the situation, and Severide had dispatched Cruz to see what he could do for Otis. Right now, what Cruz could do was hold him back, out of the way. He let Otis lean on him through the agony of watching the paramedics place a breathing tube in Meg’s throat so that they could ventilate her scorched lungs through her swollen airway. As they watched Brett insert an IV in her arm and do other things that should have been painful and annoying, there was absolutely no response from Meg.  


“Cruz, man, I don’t think I can take it if…” Brian’s voice failed.  


“Don’t say it, Bro. She’s gonna be fine. She’s not burned, and she’s gettin’ treatment from the best. She’ll be fine.”  


“She can’t die. She can’t.”  


“She won’t.”  


“I love her. I want to marry her.”  


“I know you do.”  


“But she doesn’t! I haven’t told her yet! I was too damn scared-“  


“Otis. Look at me.” Cruz forcibly turned Brian to look at him, leaning down so that they were eye to eye. “She knows. _Everybody_ knows. So she knows.”  


Brian’s eyes were wild with fear as he gripped Cruz’s forearms hard enough to hurt. Someone who didn’t know Brian as well as Cruz did might not have seen how close he was to losing control. “Joe…” he mumbled quietly, “I want to _marry_ her.”  


“And you will. The two of you are gonna raise a whole houseful of little Russian nerds, and name them all after me. There’s gonna be Joe, of course, and then Joella, and Cruz, and, uh… Cruzine, and…”  


Cruz went on, desperately trying to distract him. Brian didn’t hear a word he said, but he did hear the confidence and caring in his voice. He saw the certainty in his best friend’s face, and it gave him something to hold onto until, ten agonizingly long minutes later, Brian and Cruz helped load the stretcher into the ambulance. Cruz helped Brian take off his bulky gear, which wouldn’t fit in the small space in the back as he rode with Meg while Foster cared for her. All the way to Med, Brian sat, holding Meg’s hand, pouring his heart out to her in whispered Russian so that Foster wouldn’t know what he was saying. But her guesses weren’t far off, and she had to fight the tears that threatened, seeing the depth of his love and fear.  


Brian realized in the endless, excruciating hours that he waited for news and battled his fierce need to see and touch Meg, what it is to have your brothers rally around you in a situation like the one he was in. He’d been part of the crowd in this room more times than he could count, because it’s what you do, and because he cared. But now, trying to hold it together and find any way to endure the interminable hours while the ER staff at Chicago Med worked on Meg, he realized for the first time why firefighters and cops do it. And he realized that he needed his brothers around him right now more than he had ever needed them in an inferno. In a fire, he knew what to do. In a fire, there was something he could do. Here, he could only stand, helpless, imagining one horrific scenario after another and trying to hold on from one breath to the next. He vowed in that moment that he would always be there when one of his fellow firefighters was in this position, for as long as it took.  


Meg’s parents and her sister sat in a tight, terrified knot on one side of the waiting room. Brian went to sit with them as much as he could, but he was far too restless to stay in one place. Except for Brian, Meg’s family spoke to the firefighters only when spoken to. Chief Boden and Captain Casey were as polite and helpful as they could be, but the Armstrongs weren’t in a position to do much more than answer simple questions. All of the firefighters had been here before. Meg’s family had not.  


Brian found himself scrolling through pictures in his phone, just for something to do. He and Meg took an insane number of selfies, just smiling, or making ridiculous faces, or enjoying someplace fun. _She was so fucking beautiful. How the hell had a guy like him found such a perfect woman, let alone been lucky enough to be her boyfriend? What was a smart, sexy, accomplished woman like that doing with him?_ Brian stared for a long time at pictures of himself and Meg, aching for the easy, simple happiness of those moments.  


In addition to their selfies, Brian snapped pictures of Meg all the time, whenever he wanted to remember the way she looked at a particular moment, or just because he felt like it. In some of them she was laughing, in some smiling happily, and in some she was looking at him with what he hoped was the same love he felt for her. The adorable girl who caught his eye wearing a Tabiti costume and then disappeared. He remembered his profound joy when he’d found her again, standing outside Molly’s under a streetlight, just looking up at the snow. How astounded they’d been to learn that they’d been right under each other’s noses all along. He thought about how he’d have felt at that moment, had he known how precious she would become to him.  


And now this.  


Brian felt as if nothing was real. It was as though he was watching an old movie as he and Meg’s family followed Ethan Choi into the treatment room where Meg was lying, white and still, a ventilator tube separating her pretty lips. Not one word of what Ethan said made any sense. Brian knew no more of what was going on with Meg, and what Ethan expected in the next days, than if Ethan hadn’t spoken at all.  


What he knew was that, now that he was next to her again, now that he could see her and hold her hand, he wasn’t leaving Meg’s side. As he leaned over to kiss her cheek, he noticed how strongly the smell of smoke still lingered in her hair.  


“She’s sedated because of the breathing tube. She’s stable, so we’ll be sending her up to ICU as soon as they’re ready. Any questions?” Ethan looked at the group expectantly.  


“How long?” Meg’s mom asked. “How long will she be like this?”  


“We don’t know, Mrs. Armstrong. I expect at least a few days, longer if it takes her airway longer to heal and the swelling to go down.”  


When Meg’s family had no further questions, and Brian just stood, gazing down at Meg with her hand in both of his, Ethan moved toward the door. “I’ll be here if you need anything, and we’ll be in to take her up to ICU in a few minutes.”  


Meg’s sister Jodie stood next to Brian with her hand on Meg’s leg. On Meg’s other side, her father held her other hand, an arm around his wife.  


“Thank you, Brian. For saving her life,” Meg’s father said gruffly.  


Brian didn’t know how to respond to that. It was his job, but he would have run into that burning building to rescue Meg no matter what he did for a living.  


Jodie briefly touched his hand as he held Meg’s. “She loves you, you know. She told me.”  


Two fat, hot tears overflowed Brian’s eyes at that. He just let them roll down his cheeks. “I love her, too. I haven’t told her yet. But I do.”  


The four of them stood, just looking at Meg’s ghostly pale face, thinking their own thoughts, until Dr. Choi came back into the room with a team of nurses. “They’re ready for her in ICU,” he said.  


The family was ushered out of the room while a brisk but controlled rush of activity took place around Meg. Quickly, the group began to move, rolling the gurney between them.  


“Come with us,” one of the nurses said, gesturing for Brian and Meg’s family to follow. Behind the group heading for the elevator, several of the ER staff exchanged worried looks. They all knew how serious their colleague’s condition was.

The next three days were the longest of Brian’s life. Chief Boden wasn’t at all surprised when Otis told him that he couldn’t leave the hospital while Meg was in such bad shape; he told Otis just to call with updates and not to worry about work. Brian’s coworkers stopped by as much as they could, but they were still on shift and couldn’t stay. Brian and Cruz texted at least hourly, and usually more.  


Meg’s family took turns sitting with her, but Brian fought a constant battle with well-meaning people who kept trying to get him to go home to sleep. He had to explain again and again that he simply couldn’t. The best anyone could do was to get him to stretch out on a couch in the ICU waiting room when Meg’s family was with her, since she could only have two visitors at a time. Cruz brought him a gym bag with fresh clothes and things, and the staff let him use the shower in their locker room, but he looked like hell and felt worse. Out of sheer exhaustion, he managed to sleep a solid five hours during one late night and early morning, but the rest was a series of fitful naps cobbled together.  


He sat, holding Meg’s cold hand, for hours on end. Waiting. Just waiting for whatever it was the doctors were looking for before they would know it was all right to take out that damn breathing tube. Watching and listening to her breathe. Praying as hard as he ever had in his life.  


On the third day, his Baba came and insisted that he go down to the hospital’s chapel with her. They prayed silently for a very long time, then prayed out loud together. After an hour, Brian couldn’t stand it anymore. He collapsed against the back of the pew and began to cry. Baba said nothing, simply sat next to him and pulled him toward her so that his head was on her lap. He wept for what felt like a lifetime, just letting his Baba pat his shoulder with one hand and pet his hair with the other, quietly crooning Russian hymns to him in her soft, gravelly voice.  


It helped. Brian felt lighter afterward, grateful beyond words as he sat up to let his Baba hold him against her and pat his head as she’d done when he was a child. He wanted to take care of Meg. All he wanted was to take care of Meg. But it was nice, for those few hours, to let his Baba take care of him.  


It was late in the morning of the fourth day before Meg’s doctors decided that it was time to lighten her sedation and attempt to take her off the ventilator. They had to do it in a series of slow steps, watching to see how she tolerated each before moving to the next. Finally, after over twelve hours of progressively weaning her from the ventilator and the breathing tube, the tube was removed and Meg was allowed to awaken fully. At first, she was groggily conscious but not able to do much more than respond to commands. She couldn’t even keep her eyes open for more than a second or two at a time, but she did make eye contact with Brian and he could see that she knew he was there with her.  


Her parents crowded around her, hugging and kissing her, telling her how much they loved her and how glad they were to see her awake again and breathing on her own. Her throat was still too damaged to speak back yet, not to mention the frequent coughing fits she had now that she was awake; she could only smile weakly and nod or shake her head.  


Brian patiently waited his turn, giving Meg’s parents and sister all the time they needed. Now that the worst was over, he was content to sit and watch her, just knowing that she was all right. Soon, though, Meg’s father stepped back and motioned Brian over.  


“I know you want to see Brian,” he said. “He hasn’t left here since they brought you in. You know it was him who rescued you from the fire.”  


Meg’s eyes, still sleepy and slightly bloodshot from the irritation of the smoke, nonetheless sparkled as she looked at Brian and held out her hand to him. Her smile, while weak and tired, took his breath away. He didn’t bother trying to stop or hide his tears as he took her hand in both of his and kissed it.  


“_Pupsik_,” he choked. “It’s so good to see you awake. You have no idea.”  


A tear streaked down her face as she sat up and pulled at the front of his shirt until he leaned over and put his arms around her. She squeezed him as hard as she could, while he did the same, their embrace lasting for so long Brian felt a twinge in his back, although he wouldn’t have let go for all the riches of the world. She turned her head into him, so that her mouth was near his ear.  


“I love you,” she whispered hoarsely, squeezing him even harder as she did.  


Brian heaved a quiet sob. “I love you, too, _Pupsik_. I love you, too.”  


Although Meg’s parents and sister were standing next to her bed in the bustling ICU, everyone but Brian and Meg might as well have been on another planet as they clung together for long, long moments.  


Meg didn’t have much strength to visit with her family and Brian for long, so her eyes soon began to drift closed again. The Armstrongs decided that, since Meg was off the ventilator and they couldn’t convince Brian to leave the hospital, they would go home for the night and return in the morning. By that time, Meg was practically asleep. They said good night, hugged and kissed her again, and softly left the room.  


Brian pulled his chair next to the bed and sat down, preparing to hold Meg’s hand again while she slept. She opened her eyes a crack and gave a huge yawn, which caused her to cough a little, but when she had recovered, she put a hand on Brian’s arm, looking into his face with what he thought might be expectation.  


“What is it? What do you need?”  


To Brian’s delighted surprise, Meg grinned a little and crooked a finger for him to come closer. Gently but gladly, he leaned toward her as she put a hand on his shoulder to pull him to her. Their lips met in a soft, tender kiss. She collapsed back on her pillow afterward, and she fell asleep with her lips ever-so-slightly curved in a private smile.


End file.
